Market watchers flagged an unusual surge in oil futures trading on Monday morning — a spike that came just minutes before President Trump announced he would postpone strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.
Minute-by-minute data show trading volume was low until about 6:49 a.m. Eastern, when volume jumped nearly tenfold over a few minutes. That brief spike subsided, then about 15 minutes later the President’s postponement emerged and the oil markets reacted sharply; crude oil subsequently plunged by about 10%.
The pattern — a sudden, concentrated burst of trades betting on crude moving down ahead of an unexpected government announcement — prompted concern that someone may have acted on information before it was public. CBS News business analyst Jill Schlesinger described the episode as “highly suspicious” and said it resembles behavior seen in insider trading: people betting against an expected market move and profiting when the announcement causes prices to drop.
Insider trading is illegal, and market participants expected regulators such as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — or the SEC for stocks — to start inquiries. Schlesinger said the lack of visible immediate action from regulators has been notable, and she pointed to a broader regulatory environment in which officials have signaled a lighter touch and some agencies have faced budget cuts or staffing pressures, potentially limiting enforcement capacity.
The unusual activity also appeared in betting markets and prediction platforms, where a sudden flow of bets moved markets in ways that looked like they anticipated the announcement. Observers worry these developments undermine confidence in a level playing field: if some traders have access to actionable information before the public, retail and long-term investors are at a disadvantage.
Schlesinger recalled historical episodes where regulators pursued high-profile cases — she cited Martha Stewart’s case as an example of enforcement consequences when irregular trades were followed up — and urged that, typically, such a trading spike would trigger methodical investigations to determine whether anyone had material nonpublic information.
At the time of reporting, regulators had not publicly announced any probe into the oil futures activity surrounding the President’s postponement. The market movement and the timing of the trades, however, have drawn sustained attention from reporters, analysts and traders watching for signs of wrongdoing or weak oversight in fast-moving electronic markets.