Oil, that strange maxi exchange of 580 million in two minutes just before Trump’s speech

On the market of oil operations for a value of over half a million dollars have been carried out in just two minutes yesterday, about un quarter of an hour before Donald Trump’s post regarding “productive” conversations with Iran. According to what the Financial Times reports, around 6,200 futures contracts on Brent and WTI were traded between 6:49 and 6:50 on Monday morning, New York time (11:49 and 11:50 Italian) just a quarter of an hour before the president of the United States wrote a post on Truth Social in which he stated that in the last few days there had been “productive conversations” with Tehran to end the war in Iran.

For Bloomberg 650 million

Bloomberg speaks of an even higher figure, 650 million dollars. According to the US Financial News Agency, in 120 seconds they were “at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate” while the average for the same time slot in five previous sessions it was around 700,000 barrels. Then about a quarter of an hour later, Trump’s post on Truth.

The timing is especially striking

“What is striking here is not just the volume of transactions, but the timing. Traders are not fortune tellers. When a positioning changes minutes before an announcement that moves the markets, this generally means that someone takes action based on what I would define unofficial information or intelligence from the Middle East”explained Stephen Innes, analyst at SPI Asset Management, interviewed by AFP. It is not known whether a single individual or multiple individuals were behind Monday’s operations.

After the speech, the collapse

Immediately after the release of Trump’s announcement, the price of crude oil and other assets collapsed a certain degree of volatility was unleashed: Futures for Wall Street’s S&P 500 index and European stocks soared as investors scaled back bets on a prolonged conflict. Several hedge funds, the FT points out, noted that this was one of numerous examples in recent months of large transactions carried out before official announcements from the US government.

“Yesterday, Monday morning, there was no major data, no Fed action was expected. It was an unusually large trade for a day with no event-related risks… Someone just got very rich,” said one trader who wished to remain anonymous.