Oil trades surged just before Trump's post on Iran talks. Some experts are suspicious.
CBSN
Financial markets experts are raising concerns about possible insider trading after an unusual spike in oil futures trading only minutes before President Trump announced talks with Iran on Truth Social. Edited by Alain Sherter In:
Financial markets experts are raising concerns about possible insider trading after an unusual spike in oil futures trading only minutes before President Trump announced talks with Iran on Truth Social.
Mr. Trump's announcement, which he posted on social media shortly after 7 a.m. EST on Monday, caused oil prices to tumble and the Dow Jones Industrial Average to surge more than 1,000 points. The president also touted what he described as "productive" peace talks with Iran, providing relief to investors concerned about rising oil prices and their impact on inflation and economic growth.
The message amounted to a sudden shift from Mr. Trump's post on Saturday that threatened to "obliterate" Iran's power plants unless it reopened the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic. That abrupt change, which caught investors by surprise, has drawn scrutiny over unusual trading activity just before Mr. Trump issued Monday's market-moving announcement.
In the minutes before Mr. Trump's Monday morning post, there was a spike in oil futures trading, according to Bloomberg News and the Financial Times. Between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m., about 6,200 Brent and West Texas Intermediate futures contracts changed hands, with a notional value of $580 million, according to the Financial Times' analysis of Bloomberg data.
The average trading level for the same time period over the previous five trading days was about 700 contracts, Bloomberg News reported.
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