Trading activity in oil futures just before President Trump’s Truth Social post about talks with Iran has prompted questions about possible insider trading. Trump posted shortly after 7 a.m. EST that talks with Iran were underway, a message that sent oil prices lower and helped fuel a more than 1,000-point jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The message represented an abrupt shift from a Saturday post that warned of plans to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz was reopened.
Bloomberg and the Financial Times identified an unusual cluster of trades between 6:49 and 6:50 a.m., when roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands—about $580 million in notional value, by the FT’s analysis of Bloomberg data. That minute’s volume was far above the roughly 700-contract average for the same minute over the previous five trading days. Market participants described the volume as atypical for that hour.
“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,” said Stephen Piepgrass, a partner focused on futures trading at Troutman Pepper Locke.
Concerns focus on whether traders acting on material, nonpublic information profited from the sudden policy shift. Jill Schlesinger, a CBS News business analyst and former options trader, noted that insider trading undermines market fairness and that making money from information unavailable to ordinary investors “stinks.” She added regulators may not pursue an inquiry aggressively given past signals from the administration favoring lighter oversight.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees futures, and the White House did not immediately comment.
The timing drew scrutiny because there were no scheduled market-moving government reports or central bank remarks that morning to explain a sudden surge. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote that the pattern would be puzzling “except that there’s an obvious explanation: Somebody close to Trump knew what he was about to do, and exploited that inside information to make huge, instant profits.”
It remains unclear whether the trades were placed by people with privileged knowledge or by automated algorithms executing preprogrammed strategies. Tim Skirrow, head of energy and derivatives at Energy Aspects, said trading at 6:50 a.m. was about six times the typical volume for that minute. He and others described the size as not enormous in absolute terms but unusual for that time of day.
This episode comes amid heightened scrutiny of both commodity and prediction markets. Several high-profile, profitable bets on geopolitical events have raised similar questions about access to confidential information. Reported examples include a Polymarket user known as “Magamyman” who reportedly won nearly $600,000 betting on the timing of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, another user who has accumulated roughly $967,000 with many Iran-related bets and an unusually high success rate on large wagers, and a January Polymarket trader who collected more than $436,000 betting that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be captured by U.S. forces shortly before a major policy move.
Oil markets themselves have been especially volatile since hostilities involving Iran began. Brent crude traded near $100 a barrel—about 37% higher than before the conflict started on Feb. 28—and futures volumes have been elevated. Several March trading days saw more than 3 million contracts change hands, versus more typical daily volumes of roughly 700,000 to 1.4 million in the three weeks before Feb. 28. “In terms of size, this is not exceptionally large—just unusual for this time of day,” said Darrell Fletcher, managing director of commodities at Bannockburn Capital Markets.
Regulatory attention has begun to focus on prediction markets as well as traditional exchanges. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has initiated a proposed rulemaking to consider how prediction platforms should guard against insider trading, a step that could reshape oversight of those sites and their interaction with commodity markets. Lawmakers from both parties have also introduced bicameral legislation aiming to prohibit bets on government actions, wars, or events that an official could influence, targeting the risk that inside knowledge could be monetized.
Prediction-market platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket say they are tightening controls and improving monitoring to flag suspicious activity as they try to stave off tougher regulation. Both firms say they have systems designed to detect outliers and unusual trades.
As scrutiny increases, regulators, lawmakers and market participants are watching whether formal investigations, rule changes or new enforcement actions follow the spike in oil trading before Trump’s post—and whether those steps will curb the potential misuse of privileged information across futures and prediction markets.