Wall Street regulators are investigating a batch of suspiciously well-timed oil trades worth more than $800 million amid mounting accusations of insider trading connected to the Iran war, according to a report.
A flurry of US and international oil futures changed hands on March 23 just moments before President Trump halted strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure in an early-morning Truth Social post.
The commander-in-chief’s pause on strikes sent oil prices nosediving as much as 13% – generating gains of $5 million or more for at least five firms that bought and sold crude futures that day, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, is now probing the surge in trading volumes over concerns an insider leaked information about the Iran war, the outlet reported.
The CFTC did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
“All federal employees are subject to government ethics guidelines that prohibit the use of nonpublic information for financial benefit,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told The Post.
“However, any implication that Administration officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting.”
The CFTC’s investigation reportedly covers at least three companies, including London-based investment firm Qube Research & Technologies, real estate financing firm Forza Fund Ltd. and French oil giant TotalEnergies.
Those firms reaped earnings of roughly $5 million, $10 million and $200,000, respectively, from the trades in question, the Journal reported.
The March 23 trades are not the first instance of suspiciously timed bets around the Iran war. On May 6, roughly $700 million worth of crude futures quickly changed hands ahead of a report on talks to end the Iran war, according to the Journal.
Last month, a US soldier was charged with using classified information to rake in more than $400,000 from bets on prediction market Polymarket around the timing of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s capture.
Meanwhile, the White House has warned staffers against using insider information to place bets on prediction markets and other futures markets, according to the Journal.
None of the firms involved in the CFTC investigation have been formally accused of wrongdoing – and insider trading on futures markets can be a difficult violation to nail down, since it’s a part of the market often dominated by algorithms.
The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz amid the Iran war has caused the worst-ever energy supply disruption, and attacks on critical infrastructure in the Middle East have worsened the crisis. Oil futures hovered around $100 a barrel for weeks and trading volumes have been high, though the price of Brent Crude dropped to around $90 Wednesday on renewed hopes for an agreement to end the conflict.
The March 23 trades caught the attention of investors, who quickly raised concerns on social media about possible insider trading, when early-morning activity jumped from hundreds of trades to thousands before Trump’s social media post.
It can be challenging to identify the motivation behind any given trade when many firms employ a mix of algorithms and individual traders. But some of the firms approached by the CFTC pointed to a specific news article as the driving force behind their early-morning bets on March 23, according to the report.
About 15 minutes before Trump’s post, Semafor published a brief article with the headline “White House eyes Iran war exit even as attacks perist [sic],” people familiar with the investigation told the Journal.
Qube told the Journal its “investment decisions are model-driven, taking into account a large variety of data sources on a continuous basis, not a directional trade driven by a specific geopolitical comment/update/outcome.”
TotalEnergies told the outlet that it is “not aware of any CFTC investigation into Totsa’s crude-oil trading activities. Totsa is firmly committed to complying with all applicable market regulations, enforces a strict market compliance program and has a zero-tolerance policy towards any wrongdoing.” Totsa is the French firm’s trading arm.
Metabit Trading, a Chinese firm associated with Forza Fund, said it has not been contacted by the CFTC.
Qube, TotalEnergies and Forza Fund did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
The feds might be looking for red flags among the three firms, including how their March 23 activity compares to trades they made in the past, and whether they made particularly aggressive trades on a certain day.
