At 6:50 AM ET Monday, the futures market was quiet. Then $1.5 billion in S&P 500 contracts changed hands in a single move, while $192 million in oil futures went the other direction. The person who placed those trades had 14 minutes to wait before President Donald Trump told the world why they were right.
At 7:05 AM ET, Trump posted on Truth Social that the US and Iran had held “very good and productive conversations” and that he was ordering a five-day halt to planned strikes on Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure. Markets moved violently in the direction the mystery trader had already positioned for.
The trades landed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange before most institutional desks were active. At that hour, order flow is sparse enough that a position of that scale registers immediately — and according to market tracker Unusual Whales, which first flagged the activity on X, the orders were four to six times larger than anything else executed in that session up to that point.
S&P 500 futures climbed past 2.5% in the minutes following Trump’s post. West Texas Intermediate crude shed nearly 6% within the same window. By the closing bell, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had added 631 points (1.38%), the S&P 500 gained 1.15%, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.38%. Brent crude closed at $99.94 a barrel — a 10.92% single-session collapse and its first finish under $100 since March 11.
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The position, structured to profit precisely from a de-escalation announcement, gained an estimated $60 million before markets opened.
Related: Who’s Betting on an Iran Ceasefire — and What Do They Know?
The Financial Times first reported the suspicious timing. It drew immediate comparisons to a known market-manipulation playbook: buy equities, short commodities, then wait for a geopolitical headline that does the rest.
CNBC reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees large futures market activity, is among the regulators now examining the trades.
Trump told Fox Business the weekend negotiations involved special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. An Israeli official told Axios that the two envoys had been in direct contact with Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey relaying messages between the parties. Trump declined to name the Iranian official publicly, saying he did not want to endanger him.
Iran’s state media flatly rejected the account. An unnamed senior security official said the talks never happened and described Trump’s post as a calculated move to calm energy markets. No Iranian official has publicly confirmed that any negotiations took place.
The five-day pause on strikes expires Friday, March 28.
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