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 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 empire decline,” economist Chris Martenson remarked in a Wednesday X post sharing the FT’s headline.

If nobody goes to jail for this, we’ve entered the ‘every man for himself’ stage of empire decline. pic.twitter.com/GQGvSfMw1V

— Chris Martenson (@chrismartenson) March 25, 2026

“I am pleased to report that the United States of America, and the country of Iran, have had, over the last two days, very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East,” the president wrote in the Monday morning post.

“Based on the tenor and tone of these in depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the department of war to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions,” he added in the post.

“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told the FT.

A portfolio manager at a hedge fund told the outlet that the thousands of futures being traded at once early on a Monday morning was “really abnormal” based on his “gut from watching markets for the last 25 years.”

“It’s an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk,” he added. “Somebody just got a lot richer.”

This is not the first time that traders reportedly made significant bets in relation to a foreign policy development.

One trader made a total of $1 million from a series of multiple five-figure bets on the popular prediction website Polymarket predicting the U.S. and/or Israel will take military action against Iran, CNN reported Tuesday. The individual had a 93% success rate in his or her bets.

“All of this is strong signaling of insider activity, based on the amount they made, the markets they bet on, the timing of their trades, the success rates of these trades, and the fact that they are connected on-chain,” Nick Vaiman, the CEO of blockchain analytics software Bubblemaps, told CNN.

Another Polymarket user won $400,000 due to a Jan. 2 bet he made that Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro would be out of power by the end of the month. U.S. forces captured and removed Maduro the following morning.

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