Traders Made Hundreds of Millions in Suspiciously Timed Iran Bets

Stock traders made oil bets totaling in the nine figures in a two-minute period just over a half hour before President Donald Trump revealed there had been “productive conversations” between the U.S. and Iran, the Financial Times (FT) reported.

Traders dealt more than 6,000 Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures contracts — collectively worth $580 million — between 6:49 a.m. and 6:50 a.m. ET Monday, according to the FT. At 7:23 a.m., Trump sent a Truth social post announcing the conversations between the two nations, which have been engaged in a war since Feb. 28.

Brent and WTI are the two main global oil price benchmarks. Both benchmarks’ trading values leaped simultaneously at 6:49 a.m., per the FT. It remains unknown whether one or multiple actors engaged in the trades, the outlet reported.

“If nobody goes to jail for this, we’ve entered the ‘every man for himself’ stage of