Half-billion-dollar oil trade before Trump Iran post sparks market questions

Investors executed roughly half a billion dollars in oil trades just minutes before Donald Trump announced “productive” talks with Iran, prompting questions about timing and market awareness.

On Monday, between 06:49 and 06:50 New York time, approximately 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands. The transactions occurred about 15 minutes before the US president posted on Truth Social that recent discussions with Tehran aimed at ending the war had been “productive.”

Calculations by the Financial Times, based on Bloomberg data, put the notional value of those trades at $580 million.

Trading volumes in Brent and WTI spiked simultaneously 27 seconds before 06:50. Shortly after the oil trades, futures tracking the S&P 500 rose, with volumes also increasing markedly during that interval.

It was not clear whether a single institution or multiple entities were behind Monday’s trades.

At 07:04, Trump’s statement triggered a sharp sell-off in global energy markets as investors scaled back expectations of a prolonged conflict. At the same time, S&P 500 futures and European equities moved higher.

The well-timed transactions echoed a recent wave of highly profitable bets on the prediction market Polymarket, where traders had speculated on the timing of US strikes on Iran and Venezuela.

A market strategist at a US brokerage, referring to Monday’s activity, said: “It’s hard to prove causality… but you have to wonder who was being relatively aggressive in selling futures 15 minutes before Trump’s post.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said: “President Trump and officials in the Trump administration are solely focused on doing what is best for the American people.”

Desai added: “The White House does not tolerate any official profiting illegally from inside information, and suggestions made without evidence that officials engaged in such activity are baseless and irresponsible reporting.”

Several hedge funds said the trades were one of many recent instances of large market moves preceding official US government announcements.

A trader at a large hedge fund said energy consultants had recently identified several sizable block trades whose timing appeared “unusual.”

Another portfolio manager said a series of large, well-timed trades had created a sense of “frustration” among investors:

“My instinct, from watching markets for 25 years, is that this is really abnormal. On Monday morning, there was no major data, no Fed speaker you’d want to front-run. It’s an unusually large trade for a day without event risk… someone just got a lot richer.”

Later on Monday, in a post on X, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf denied that any negotiations had taken place between Washington and Tehran.

“False news is being used to manipulate financial and oil markets and to help the US and Israel out of the quagmire they are stuck in,” he said.

His remarks pushed global equities lower and prompted renewed buying in energy markets.

A commodities trader said the scale of the oil futures selling was not exceptionally large compared with volumes in what had already been a volatile pre-war market. However, the trader noted a sharp move in Europe’s TTF gas benchmark at roughly the same time.

Tim Skirrow, head of derivatives at consultancy Energy Aspects, said: “This is higher volume than I would have expected at that time in Brent and WTI, but not extremely high. I struggle somewhat to connect the dots here.”

Skirrow added that Brent futures and options markets had seen “significant inflows” from funds in recent weeks.

“Looking at the price reaction, almost everyone appears to be long. That is almost inevitably a precursor to a move of this magnitude,” he said.