Traders placed $500m in oil bets 15 minutes before Trump’s post and no one knows who did it

Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, is pushing for a federal probe into suspicious trading activity in oil and equity futures markets. As reported by BBC News and CNBC, the call follows a massive surge in trades that occurred just before President Donald Trump announced a five-day delay in attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure in March. Over $500 million in crude oil futures trades were made in roughly the 15 minutes preceding Trump’s post on Truth Social, which halted the strikes.

Throughout Trump’s second term, there has been a consistent pattern of traders betting millions of dollars just before he makes major announcements. When financial market data is matched against some of the president’s most significant market-moving statements, spikes in trade volume appear hours or even minutes before a social media post or media interview goes public. This pattern carries the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, where individuals place bets using information not available to the general public.

The specific incident that caught Torres’s attention occurred on March 23, 2026. Just two days after threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants, Trump posted on Truth Social about “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” with Tehran, hinting at a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION” to hostilities. Stocks rose immediately, and the US benchmark oil price fell sharply. Fourteen minutes before that post, an unusually high number of bets had been placed on the US oil price falling, a pattern also observed in Brent crude contracts. One oil analyst described the trades as “abnormal, for sure.”

Someone knew something the rest of the market did not

Torres questioned, “What kind of trader would make a massive trade at 6:49 AM, 15 minutes before a market-moving presidential announcement with billions of dollars at stake and without a hedge?” He stated that “the only plausible answer to that question is an insider trader,” calling any other explanation “a statistical impossibility.” Torres has called on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in consultation with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), to obtain comprehensive trading records, stating the activity “may constitute one of the largest instances of insider trading in history.”

This was not an isolated case. On March 9, 2026, nine days into the US-Israel war with Iran, Trump told CBS News in a phone interview that the conflict was “very complete, pretty much.” The public first learned of the interview at 3:16 PM Eastern Time when the reporter posted about it on X. Oil traders reacted swiftly, sending prices down roughly 25%. However, market data shows a massive surge of bets on falling oil prices had been placed at 6:29 PM GMT, a full 47 minutes before that post. The traders who made those early bets likely earned millions from the subsequent drop.

Other trading activity has also drawn scrutiny. On April 9, 2025, Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for all countries except China. Stock markets had plunged after his initial “Liberation Day” tariff announcement, but soared after the pause, with the S&P 500 jumping 9.5% in one of its largest single-day gains since World War II. Before that announcement, an unusually high number of bets were placed on a fund tracking the S&P 500, with contracts surging past 10,000 per minute just after 6:00 PM BST, compared to hundreds traded earlier in the day. Some traders bet over $2 million on the market rising that day despite seven consecutive days of losses, a position that could have generated nearly $20 million in profit. Several senior Senate Democrats subsequently wrote to the SEC urging it to investigate whether those announcements “enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public.” An SEC spokesman declined to comment, and the White House did not respond.

Blockchain-powered prediction markets have also come under scrutiny, amid ongoing US-Iran ceasefire tensions. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allow users to speculate on events ranging from weather to US foreign policy. Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in Polymarket and sits on its advisory board, and also acts as a strategic advisor to Kalshi.

One particularly striking example surfaced on Polymarket in December 2025. A user named Burdensome-Mix placed $32,500 on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro being out of office by the end of January 2026. When Maduro was seized by US special forces and ousted the very next day, the account won $436,000. Immediately after, the account changed its username and has not placed a bet since.

In February 2026, six Polymarket accounts were created and all placed wagers on a US strike on Iran occurring by February 28. When Trump confirmed the attacks in the early hours of that day, these accounts collectively earned $1.2 million. Five of the users have not placed bets since, though one later made $163,000 by correctly betting on a US-Iran ceasefire by April 7, the date Washington and Tehran announced the agreement.

Polymarket has stated it “proactively” works with regulators and law enforcement and holds the “highest standards of market integrity.” Both Polymarket and Kalshi introduced new rules in March to crack down on insider trading. The White House also sent an internal email to staff last month warning against using insider information on prediction markets. Spokesman Davis Ingle said at the time that “any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.” The CFTC did not respond to requests for comment, though its chair recently told a Congressional committee the agency has “zero tolerance” for fraud and insider trading.

Insider trading has been illegal for most Americans since the Securities Act was passed in 1933, and was extended to US government officials in 2012. However, no one has been prosecuted under the law to date. Paul Oudin, a professor of financial regulation law at ESSEC Business School, explains that enforcement is extremely difficult. “The financial authorities will not carry out a prosecution if they can’t figure out who the source of information is,” Oudin said, adding that even trades clearly tied to advance knowledge of a presidential announcement carry “a strong chance that no-one will be prosecuted.”

Torres sent letters to the heads of both the SEC and CFTC and previously raised concerns about insider trading on prediction markets before Maduro’s ouster. He also introduced legislation in January that would bar federal elected officials, congressional staff, and executive branch appointees from trading event contracts based on government policy if they possess nonpublic information. The bill has 42 Democratic co-sponsors but is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled House. Torres has acknowledged a “lack of confidence in our market regulators” but said, “we have no choice but to agitate for accountability.” A group of House Democrats also separately wrote to the CFTC questioning its oversight of offshore prediction markets, citing “recent high-profile instances of alleged insider trading” tied to US military actions in Venezuela and Iran, amid questions about Trump’s Middle East diplomacy.