Thousands of oil contracts – a higher volume than normal – traded 15 minutes before US President Donald Trump pledged to halt strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, sending prices tumbling, financial media reported on Tuesday.

Between 1049 and 1050 GMT on Monday, oil trading volumes surged to around US$580 million, according to the Financial Times. Bloomberg put the value at US$650 million.

During those two minutes, at least six million barrels of Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate changed hands, far above the roughly 700,000-barrel average recorded at a similar time over the previous five days, Bloomberg reported.

About 15 minutes later, Trump stepped back on his threat to attack energy sites citing "very good" talks to end the war in a social media post, which sent crude prices plunging more than 14 percent.

The traders who bet on prices dropping ahead of the announcement would likely have profited from Trump's sudden reversal, prompting some analysts to question whether some market participants had acted on prior information.

"What stands out here isn't just the size of the trades, but the timing" said Stephen Innes, an analyst at SPI Asset Management.

"Traders are not clairvoyant. When positioning shifts minutes ahead of a market-moving headline, it usually means someone is acting on...intel before the story broke," he added.

Similarly, S&P 500 stock index futures showed an unusual burst of trading activity early on Monday, about 15 minutes before Trump's social media post, CNBC reported.

Senator Chris Murphy, responding to a social media post that alleged a single US$1.5 billion purchase of S&P 500 futures just before Trump's announcement, called it an example of "mind blowing corruption."

"A $1.5 BILLION BET... 5 minutes before Trump's post. Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer? This is corruption. Mind blowing corruption," the Democratic lawmaker said on X.

The speculation about insider trading has also spread to prediction markets, which allow people to bet on the likelihood of thousands of global events.

CNN reported that one trader made US$1 million from dozens of well-timed bets on Polymarket that correctly predicted US and Israeli military actions against Iran.

Based on findings from Bubblemaps, an analytics company that tracks blockchain transactions, this particular better has had a pattern of prescient bets, including hours before Israeli's October 2024 strikes on Iran, CNN reported.

Innes noted that the oil market is "not just traders speculating on price; it's a tightly connected ecosystem of physical players, refiners, shippers and governments, all operating within overlapping information channels."

He added that the activity could have been driven by a large producer hedging against a potential price drop, given that oil futures had surged 40 percent since the start of the war.

A few hours after Trump's announcement, Tehran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, reportedly involved in talks, said "no negotiations" were underway, insisting Trump was seeking "to manipulate the financial and oil markets." (AFP)



Edited by Cecil Wong