New York, New York - Thousands of oil contracts, much a higher volume than normal, traded 15 minutes before President Donald Trump pledged to halt strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, sending prices tumbling.
Between 6:49 and 6:50 AM ET on Monday, oil trading volumes surged to around $580 million, according to the Financial Times. Bloomberg put the value at $650 million.
During those two minutes, at least six million barrels of Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate changed hands, far above the roughly 700,000-barrel average recorded at a similar time over the previous five days, Bloomberg reported.
About 15 minutes later, Trump stepped back on his threat to attack energy sites citing "very good" talks to end the war, which sent crude prices plunging more than 14%.The traders who bet on prices dropping ahead of the announcement would likely have profited from Trump's sudden reversal, prompting some analysts to question whether some market participants had acted on prior information.
"What stands out here isn't just the size of the trades, but the timing," Stephen Innes, an analyst at SPI Asset Management told AFP.
"Traders are not clairvoyant. When positioning shifts minutes ahead of a market-moving headline, it usually means someone is acting on...intel before the story broke," he added.
Innes noted that the oil market is "not just traders speculating on price; it's a tightly connected ecosystem of physical players, refiners, shippers and governments, all operating within overlapping information channels".
He added that the activity could have been driven by a large producer hedging against a potential price drop, given that oil futures had surged 40% since the start of the war.
A few hours after Trump's announcement, Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said "no negotiations" were underway, insisting Trump was seeking "to manipulate the financial and oil markets."