Roughly $580 million in oil futures changed hands just 15 minutes before Donald Trump promised to halt American attacks on Iran’s power plants.
The trades took place on March 23, all within a minute of each other. Just fifteen minutes later, Trump reported that talks with Iran were making progress, and oil prices fell sharply.
Dutch financial markets regulator, AFM, flagged the trades in its annual Trendzicht report, with chair Laura van Geest telling BNR that “insider trading appears to have taken place”.
Why are these trades so suspicious?
The trades came in quick succession, during a quiet moment, when there were no signs of progress in US-Iran talks. Traders who bet on oil prices falling made off with huge profits.
Some analysts suspect a leak from someone close to Trump. However, van Geest isn’t naming names, as she tells BNR: “It looks like someone somewhere in the offices — because that doesn’t necessarily have to be the top management — has taken advantage of this.”
And this wouldn’t be the first time AFM has flagged some dodgy deals.
On April 7, just a few hours before a ceasefire with Iran was announced, traders bet around $950 million on oil prices falling. When the ceasefire was announced, oil prices fell roughly 15%.
Why is a Dutch regulator getting involved?
“We regulate the gas futures market ourselves, so we have a special interest in how these markets operate,” van Geest tells BNR.
Catching hints of insider trading is “worrying,” she continues, “because those are not the fair and transparent markets that we advocate for.”
The AFM’s report also warns that this kind of trading is getting much harder to catch. Traders can spread their deals across multiple platforms, products, and countries — and with that data scattered, suspicious patterns are much harder to flag.
In the meantime, US senators have asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to investigate the series of suspicious trades, the report notes, and the US regulator is looking into it.
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