{"id":314551,"date":"2026-03-30T12:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=314551"},"modified":"2026-03-30T08:18:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T07:18:48","slug":"mind-blowing-corruption-traders-placed-massive-bets-minutes-before-trumps-post-on-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/03\/mind-blowing-corruption-traders-placed-massive-bets-minutes-before-trumps-post-on-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Mind-Blowing Corruption\u2019: Traders Placed Massive Bets Minutes before Trump\u2019s Post on Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on 18 Mar 2026 in New York City.\u00a0 (Photo by Michael M. Santiago\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWho was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?\u201d asked US Sen. Chris Murphy.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

24 Mar 2026\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0Just minutes before US President Donald Trump<\/a> momentarily boosted the stock market\u2014and sent oil<\/a> prices tumbling\u2014with his disputed Monday announcement<\/a> of peace talks with Iran, unknown traders loaded up on positions that allowed them to profit from the resulting movement in equities and commodities.<\/p>\n

The Financial Times reported that \u201croughly 6,200 Brent and West Texas<\/a> Intermediate futures contracts changed hands between 6:49 am and 6:50 am New York time on Monday, just a quarter of an hour ahead of the US president\u2019s post on Truth Social that there had in recent days been \u2018productive conversations\u2019 with Tehran<\/a> to end the war in Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n

FT added that the notional value of those trades was $580 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrading volumes for Brent and WTI leapt at the same time, 27 seconds before 6:50 am,\u201d the newspaper reported. \u201cFutures tracking the S&P 500 share index jumped in price moments after the oil trade<\/a>, with volumes also rising significantly during that timeframe. It was not known whether one entity or several entities were behind Monday\u2019s trades.\u201d<\/p>\n

An unnamed trader at a \u201cmajor hedge fund\u201d told FT that \u201cmy gut from watching markets for the last 25 years is this is really abnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Monday morning, there\u2019s no important data today, there aren\u2019t any Fed speakers you\u2019d want to front-run. It\u2019s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk,\u201d the trader said. \u201cSomebody just got a lot richer.\u201d<\/p>\n

A BBC review<\/a> of market data similarly found that \u201ctraders bet hundreds of millions of dollars on oil contracts just minutes before\u201d Trump\u2019s announcement of talks with Iran. Iranian officials publicly denied<\/a> that they are negotiating with the Trump administration<\/a>, and Iran\u2019s top lawmaker accused<\/a> the US president of peddling \u201cfake news\u201d in an attempt to \u201cmanipulate the financial and oil markets.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suspiciously timed bets ahead of the US president\u2019s post heightened concerns that Trump administration insiders are illegally trading on\u2014and profiting massively from\u2014nonpublic knowledge.<\/p>\n

Responding to a report<\/a> that $1.5 billion worth of S&P 500 futures was purchased just five minutes before Trump\u2019s Monday announcement, US Sen. Chris Murphy<\/a> (D-Conn.) asked: \u201cWho was it? Trump? A family member? A White House<\/a> staffer?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is corruption<\/a>,\u201d the senator wrote. \u201cMind-blowing corruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, Murphy joined US Rep. Greg Casar<\/a> (D-Texas) in unveiling legislation<\/a> that would ban prediction markets on \u201cgovernment actions, terrorism, war, assassination, and events where an individual knows or controls the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill came on the heels of suspiciously timed, highly profitable bets related to US military<\/a> actions in Venezuela<\/a> and Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Guardian reported Monday that several newly created accounts on the online prediction platform Polymarket \u201claid bets on a US-Iran ceasefire over the weekend that appeared to show signs of insider knowledge, according to experts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Researcher Ben Yorke told the newspaper that the accounts\u2014which are anonymous\u2014\u201cdefinitely\u201d look like \u201csomeone with some degree of inside info.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian noted that \u201conline crypto watchers and experts suggested that the bets bore the signs of insider trading\u2014both because they bought their positions at market price, and because some of the accounts looked like they could belong to a single investor attempting to conceal their identity by splitting their bet between multiple wallets.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Yorke, \u201cTypically, when you see wallet-splitting and deliberate attempts to obfuscate identity, it\u2019s one of two scenarios: either a very large investor trying to shield their position from market impact, or insider trading.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump White House insisted<\/a> Monday that any suggestion of insider trading \u201cis baseless and irresponsible reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge,\u201d said White House spokesperson Kush Desai.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jake Johnson is a staff writer for<\/i> Common Dreams.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original – commondreams.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

24 Mar 2026\u00a0–\u00a0Just minutes before Trump momentarily boosted the stock market\u2014and sent oil prices tumbling\u2014with his disputed announcement of peace talks with Iran, unknown traders loaded up on positions to profit from the resulting movement in equities and commodities. Value of those trades: $580 million.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":314553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[232,3945,550,2154,742,3947,249,70,481],"class_list":["post-314551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capitalism","tag-capitalism","tag-casino-capitalism","tag-corruption","tag-inside-job","tag-iran","tag-predatory-capitalism","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-warfare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314551"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314554,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314551\/revisions\/314554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}