Suspicious Oil Trades Worth $580 Million Preceded Trump's Iran Post by Minutes

S&P 500 and oil futures flashed an unusual burst of activity early Monday, minutes before a market-moving post from President Donald Trump. At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-mini futures on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume, breaking from an otherwise subdued premarket backdrop. With thin liquidity typical of early trading hours, the sudden burst stood out as one of the largest volume moments of the session up to that point.

In the minutes before Trump's Monday morning post, there was a spike in oil futures trading, according to Bloomberg News and the Financial Times. Between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m., about 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands, with a notional value of $580 million, according to the Financial Times' analysis of Bloomberg data. The average trading level for the same time period over the previous five trading days was about 700 contracts, Bloomberg reported — meaning Monday's burst was roughly nine times the norm for that window.

Roughly 15 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran had held talks and that he was halting planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. In the post, Trump declared: "I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST." He added: "I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS."

The announcement prompted an instant rally in risk assets, with S&P 500 futures soaring more than 2.5% before the opening bell, while West Texas Intermediate futures dropped nearly 6%. By the close, oil prices tumbled and the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged more than 1,000 points.

The message amounted to a sudden shift from Trump's post on Saturday, which had threatened to "obliterate" Iran's power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic. US gas prices rose for the 23rd straight day Monday, reaching $3.96 per gallon in the latest reading from AAA, the highest since August 2022. The average price was up $1.02, or 34%, in just the last month.

One reason the surge in oil futures trading is arousing suspicion is that no market-moving announcements were slated for Monday morning, such as government economic releases or speeches from Federal Reserve officials. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in a March 24 blog post that the trading "was especially bizarre because there were no major news items — no major publicly available news items — to drive sudden big market transactions."

Stephen Piepgrass, a partner who specializes in futures trading at the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke, told CBS News: "The massive spike in volume of trades right before that post is certainly enough to raise eyebrows, and I think to launch an investigation into what was behind that."

Not everyone reads the pattern as sinister. Tim Sherrow, head of derivatives at energy consultancy Energy Aspects, said the trade size "was larger than usual for that time of day, but it is difficult to call it excessive," and added that it is "not easy to link individual circumstances into a single causal relationship." He noted that capital inflows into the Brent futures and options markets had increased significantly in recent weeks, and that when positions are "skewed this heavily in one direction, even a small trigger can cause prices to move sharply."

Robert Rennie, head of commodity and carbon research at Westpac Banking Corp., said: "The last thing that market participants want to see are suggestions that large, and highly profitable trades were being placed just ahead of those extreme swings."

The episode also carries a direct diplomatic contradiction. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran's parliament, denied that any negotiations with Washington had taken place, alleging that Trump's announcement was "fake news used to manipulate financial and oil markets."

Signs of potential manipulation in the oil markets come as concerns mount among lawmakers and regulators over possible insider trading on prediction market platforms. In recent months, Polymarket users have placed a series of unusually well-timed bets on the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and on the Iran war, leading some to question whether people are making trades based on classified information. On Monday, The Guardian reported that bets totaling $70,000 made by eight Polymarket users on a U.S.-Iran ceasefire suggest potential insider trading.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees futures markets, did not immediately return a request for comment. The White House also did not immediately return a request for comment. The CFTC appears to be taking a more hands-on approach to such activity, according to Piepgrass, and recently launched a proposed rulemaking process that focuses in part on what actions prediction markets should take to prevent insider trading.

Whether the trades reflect foreknowledge of Trump's pivot or simply the kind of large, poorly-timed algorithmic positioning that markets occasionally produce, the central data point is stark: whoever sold crude and bought equity futures in that single 60-second window at 6:49 a.m. on Monday was perfectly positioned for one of the most consequential geopolitical announcements of the year.