Traders placed nearly half a billion dollars in bets on falling oil prices just 15 minutes before President Trump’s announcement of “productive” talks with Iran sent prices tumbling.
“It’s hard to prove causality . . . but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” one market strategist told the Financial Times of the transactions.
Roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate contracts traded between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. on Monday, with unusually large bets in the oil futures market, worth roughly $580 million.
The trades seemed reminiscent of an anonymous bet on Polymarket in January that saw one lucky user win $436,000 by betting on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ouster just hours before he was captured by U.S. forces.
On Monday, the trades came just minutes before Trump took to Truth Social to declare that he was postponing his threatened strikes on Iran, an announcement that caused oil prices to fall and stock futures to jump.
“My gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal,” one unnamed portfolio manager told the FT. “It’s Monday morning, there’s no important data today, there aren’t any Fed speakers you’d want to front run. It’s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk . . . Somebody just got a lot richer.”
Rule of law is important. At some point investors will start pulling money from the US scam markets and put them everywhere else
BrandenWi on
In addition to the half a billion in oil, someone also bet $1.5 Billion on the S&P going up like a rocket… 15 minutes before the fake-twitter post that made it do exactly that.
One of his billionaire buddies was told what was about to happen, in exchange for a healthy kickback, no doubt. Is it illegal? Absolutely. What’s the SEC or the FTC going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. Of course.
We all know it was trump and his buddies insider trading.
Stoic_cave on
Profits for death…
Stereo_Jungle_Child on
LOL! Sure, insider trading is illegal, but who is going to arrest them for it, the DOJ? Pam Bondi is more than likely in on it.
This is what it looks like when The Mafia takes over the federal government. We’re no different from Russia at this point.
JFJinCO on
Surely agent Krasnov wouldn’t be manipulating oil prices and sanctions for personal profit…
StatisticianBoth3480 on
Trumps net woth up 4 BILLION in a year. That’s all you need to know. They are all in on it, fricking disgusting.
CelticSith on
WH response: “yeah, and?”
Jumpy-Scallion-9463 on
Someone calling them to account? Sure.
Twicebakedpotatoe on
They do this with the tariff announcements last year too and there were zero consequences so why would they stop doing it now
krazykarlsig on
I actually think it’s less about friends of friends profiting and more about the Trump administration manipulating the markets for political gain.
I think they saw the markets tanking to start the week and said we need a two step approach. In addition to a presidential tweet that they will try to retcon to be true later they need buy pressure on equities and sell pressure on oil. The money could have come from Scott Bessant directly out of the Treasury for all we know.
Mecha-Dave on
It was Barron Trump. He’s been leveraging his way up for the whole term.
SlowRunner2026 on
Stock market has become nothing more than a rigged gambling game.
fuckswitbeavers on
It will be very difficult to get this scammed money back, just like the covid handouts to these same rich ppl. They are looting. America will turn into fallout without any of the nuclear bombs
Radically-Peaceful on
“It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.”
Get real… nobody is ‘confronting’ anybody.
JonoGuitar on
these bozos are ruining the value of the US dollar and they don’t care about the consequences. we are truly screwed.
neodiodorus on
Nothing new. We had weekends last year when he even wrote “time to buy” and even congratulated openly those who made explicitly stated sums over the weekend.
They are not even hiding it. They have been consistently doing it for almost 1.5 years – look at the timing of the big announcements, the timing of the TACOing, and so on… and by now they are deliberately stating false nonsense then retracting (just some days ago the opening of the straight then the post got deleted and so on).
cmm239 on
There will be no repercussions for any of this
popejohnsmith on
Sleaze king.
Running a rogue, aggressor nation.
JFC. What a colossal tragedy.
Affectionate_Town273 on
Corruption will define this administration
DaraParsavand on
No smart society would have ever allowed the existence of crypto currency, prediction markets or several other absolutely asinine aspects to US society. Freedom uber alles has rotted our collective brain.
SHOW_ME_PIZZA on
Man that Swamp is so drained.
King_R0A on
TIL market manipulation is legal now. All crime is legal, unless you’re not the Epstein class.
Mother_Airline_6276 on
Literally gambling with the lives of our troops. Are you happy now, MAGAts?
Altruistic-Year9648 on
“Confronted”? Shouldn’t the word be charged?
Donzi98 on
And this is one of several reasons that we waged war on Iran. Market timing. I don’t believe for an instant that the administration is stupid, just corrupt to the core. Why is the president’s hedge fund son in law part of a “diplomatic team”? He was not a politician before. If they can suck another couple bucks from our economy, they will.
No_Cupcake7037 on
Just a circle jerk.. of heinous, decrepit, child soul eating, war mongering, self enriching, demonic, human plagues of sublevel humans.
jimbis123 on
Fuck these corrupt fucks
TheBalzy on
And not a single person is going to ever go to prison.
Economy_Macaroon6093 on
When these corrupt individuals are out there making bank, who are the people losing money on this? And why are they not filing lawsuits?
NoBrush8414 on
The amount of insider trading in the past year is going to max out prison cells. I can assure you of this. They all think they’re getting away with it – not in 2026. Not at all. There’s always a trail. Trump is RIPPING the people off every day. And he is going to pay.
BalerionSanders on
We’re going to discover one day that this administration is the most significant financial criminal organization in American history.
socrates_friend812 on
This trade wasn’t just a one-off, random, “whisper” once situation. It was the act of a consolidated, organized network of billionaire criminals who have been doing this for a long time. This is what they do. This is who they are. This is how they have operated their entire lives. Epsteinians are life-long, sadistic, megalomaniacal satanist opportunists who kill, steal, rape, lie and murder like the rest of us snack, watch TV, browse the internet & brush our teeth.
And they will keep doing it. At every opportunity. And you will do nothing about it. No one will stop it. No one will do anything. It will go on.
And you will forget about it. And I will forget about it. And everyone will just forget about it.
And they will get away with it.
Like they always do.
Catymandoo on
As ever look at what Trump does not want he projects. He’s in the Whitehouse purely for himself. He hasn’t allegedly tripled his wealth through magic – but through grifting.
Odd_Collection7431 on
do we really have to pretend we’re naive idiots every time they do something like this? how many crimes before the media says the word crime? how many lies before they say the word lie?
Sir_Arthur_Vandelay on
It’s fascinating to watch the world’s largest economy so quickly transform into a pyramid scheme and investment bubble.
OonaPelota on
He’s going to need to release the Epstein files as a distraction.
shadowdra126 on
Market. Manipulation.
vroart on
Insider trading, classy 🙄
needlestack on
Throw it on the endless pile of open corruption, incompetence, and cruelty.
I now have a sence of what being in an abusive relationship feels like. You can’t escape and the person just keeps crossing boundaries. Each fresh violation destroys a bit of you but makes you forget some of the past abuse as there’s just too much to keep track of. You get numb.
Yesterday I looked at the top reddit posts for the past year and there were dozens of career ending scandals that I hadn’t even thought about in many months because so many more career ending scandals had piled on. Truly amazing.
We are a nation that chose an abuser as a leader and he’s abusing us and some of us like it and some of us hate it but we’re all victims without hope.
Responsible_Ladder25 on
It’s maddening, but to be expected at this point. When there are literally no consequences for any of it, why would you stop?
45 Comments
Traders placed nearly half a billion dollars in bets on falling oil prices just 15 minutes before President Trump’s announcement of “productive” talks with Iran sent prices tumbling.
“It’s hard to prove causality . . . but you have to wonder who would have been relatively aggressive at selling futures at that point, 15 minutes before Trump’s post,” one market strategist told the Financial Times of the transactions.
Roughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate contracts traded between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. on Monday, with unusually large bets in the oil futures market, worth roughly $580 million.
The trades seemed reminiscent of an anonymous bet on Polymarket in January that saw one lucky user win $436,000 by betting on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s ouster just hours before he was captured by U.S. forces.
On Monday, the trades came just minutes before Trump took to Truth Social to declare that he was postponing his threatened strikes on Iran, an announcement that caused oil prices to fall and stock futures to jump.
“My gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal,” one unnamed portfolio manager told the FT. “It’s Monday morning, there’s no important data today, there aren’t any Fed speakers you’d want to front run. It’s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk . . . Somebody just got a lot richer.”
Read the full story, [here](https://www.thedailybeast.com/traders-made-huge-bets-15-minutes-before-trumps-major-war-u-turn/).
Rule of law is important. At some point investors will start pulling money from the US scam markets and put them everywhere else
In addition to the half a billion in oil, someone also bet $1.5 Billion on the S&P going up like a rocket… 15 minutes before the fake-twitter post that made it do exactly that.
One of his billionaire buddies was told what was about to happen, in exchange for a healthy kickback, no doubt. Is it illegal? Absolutely. What’s the SEC or the FTC going to do about it? Absolutely nothing. Of course.
War as a market signal -truly the American way.
Was it Baron? I heard he’s good with computer.
Remember when DOGE emptied the SEC office?
* [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/doge-targets-sec-next-for-job-cuts-priority-shifts-explained](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/doge-targets-sec-next-for-job-cuts-priority-shifts-explained)
* [https://www.barrons.com/articles/doge-sec-cuts-1cbe7443](https://www.barrons.com/articles/doge-sec-cuts-1cbe7443)
We all know it was trump and his buddies insider trading.
Profits for death…
LOL! Sure, insider trading is illegal, but who is going to arrest them for it, the DOJ? Pam Bondi is more than likely in on it.
This is what it looks like when The Mafia takes over the federal government. We’re no different from Russia at this point.
Surely agent Krasnov wouldn’t be manipulating oil prices and sanctions for personal profit…
Trumps net woth up 4 BILLION in a year. That’s all you need to know. They are all in on it, fricking disgusting.
WH response: “yeah, and?”
Someone calling them to account? Sure.
They do this with the tariff announcements last year too and there were zero consequences so why would they stop doing it now
I actually think it’s less about friends of friends profiting and more about the Trump administration manipulating the markets for political gain.
I think they saw the markets tanking to start the week and said we need a two step approach. In addition to a presidential tweet that they will try to retcon to be true later they need buy pressure on equities and sell pressure on oil. The money could have come from Scott Bessant directly out of the Treasury for all we know.
It was Barron Trump. He’s been leveraging his way up for the whole term.
Stock market has become nothing more than a rigged gambling game.
It will be very difficult to get this scammed money back, just like the covid handouts to these same rich ppl. They are looting. America will turn into fallout without any of the nuclear bombs
“It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.”
Get real… nobody is ‘confronting’ anybody.
these bozos are ruining the value of the US dollar and they don’t care about the consequences. we are truly screwed.
Nothing new. We had weekends last year when he even wrote “time to buy” and even congratulated openly those who made explicitly stated sums over the weekend.
They are not even hiding it. They have been consistently doing it for almost 1.5 years – look at the timing of the big announcements, the timing of the TACOing, and so on… and by now they are deliberately stating false nonsense then retracting (just some days ago the opening of the straight then the post got deleted and so on).
There will be no repercussions for any of this
Sleaze king.
Running a rogue, aggressor nation.
JFC. What a colossal tragedy.
Corruption will define this administration
No smart society would have ever allowed the existence of crypto currency, prediction markets or several other absolutely asinine aspects to US society. Freedom uber alles has rotted our collective brain.
Man that Swamp is so drained.
TIL market manipulation is legal now. All crime is legal, unless you’re not the Epstein class.
Literally gambling with the lives of our troops. Are you happy now, MAGAts?
“Confronted”? Shouldn’t the word be charged?
And this is one of several reasons that we waged war on Iran. Market timing. I don’t believe for an instant that the administration is stupid, just corrupt to the core. Why is the president’s hedge fund son in law part of a “diplomatic team”? He was not a politician before. If they can suck another couple bucks from our economy, they will.
Just a circle jerk.. of heinous, decrepit, child soul eating, war mongering, self enriching, demonic, human plagues of sublevel humans.
Fuck these corrupt fucks
And not a single person is going to ever go to prison.
When these corrupt individuals are out there making bank, who are the people losing money on this? And why are they not filing lawsuits?
The amount of insider trading in the past year is going to max out prison cells. I can assure you of this. They all think they’re getting away with it – not in 2026. Not at all. There’s always a trail. Trump is RIPPING the people off every day. And he is going to pay.
We’re going to discover one day that this administration is the most significant financial criminal organization in American history.
This trade wasn’t just a one-off, random, “whisper” once situation. It was the act of a consolidated, organized network of billionaire criminals who have been doing this for a long time. This is what they do. This is who they are. This is how they have operated their entire lives. Epsteinians are life-long, sadistic, megalomaniacal satanist opportunists who kill, steal, rape, lie and murder like the rest of us snack, watch TV, browse the internet & brush our teeth.
And they will keep doing it. At every opportunity. And you will do nothing about it. No one will stop it. No one will do anything. It will go on.
And you will forget about it. And I will forget about it. And everyone will just forget about it.
And they will get away with it.
Like they always do.
As ever look at what Trump does not want he projects. He’s in the Whitehouse purely for himself. He hasn’t allegedly tripled his wealth through magic – but through grifting.
do we really have to pretend we’re naive idiots every time they do something like this? how many crimes before the media says the word crime? how many lies before they say the word lie?
It’s fascinating to watch the world’s largest economy so quickly transform into a pyramid scheme and investment bubble.
He’s going to need to release the Epstein files as a distraction.
Market. Manipulation.
Insider trading, classy 🙄
Throw it on the endless pile of open corruption, incompetence, and cruelty.
I now have a sence of what being in an abusive relationship feels like. You can’t escape and the person just keeps crossing boundaries. Each fresh violation destroys a bit of you but makes you forget some of the past abuse as there’s just too much to keep track of. You get numb.
Yesterday I looked at the top reddit posts for the past year and there were dozens of career ending scandals that I hadn’t even thought about in many months because so many more career ending scandals had piled on. Truly amazing.
We are a nation that chose an abuser as a leader and he’s abusing us and some of us like it and some of us hate it but we’re all victims without hope.
It’s maddening, but to be expected at this point. When there are literally no consequences for any of it, why would you stop?