On Tuesday, April 7, 2026, at 19:45 GMT, nearly three hours before Trump announced a "two-week ceasefire" between the United States and Iran on Truth Social, there was a vacuum period when London traders had finished work and Asian traders had not yet started, with typically only a few hundred oil futures trades executed per minute. During that hour, someone sold approximately 6,200 contracts of Brent crude oil and 2,400 contracts of WTI crude oil futures, totaling 8,600 contracts, with a nominal amount of about $950 million.

The next day, Asian trading opened, and oil prices fell by about 15%, with WTI dropping below $100. According to Reuters citing LSEG trading data, the scale of this short position "is completely atypical for that period." Congressman Ritchie Torres sent a letter to the SEC and CFTC on April 8, requesting an investigation.

This is not the first time. More accurately, this is the second recorded instance of the same "script" since the current US-Iran conflict began.

Same trading signature, two precise points

The incident on Monday morning, March 22, 2026, did not gain fame like the one on April 7 because it did not trigger a large drop in oil prices. However, from a trading structure perspective, it is the prototype of this "script." According to trading data cited by CBS News and the Financial Times, from 6:49 to 6:50 AM Eastern Time, or 10:49 GMT, a total of 6,200 contracts of Brent and WTI futures were traded, amounting to approximately $580 million.

Fifteen minutes later, Trump posted on Truth Social, stating that constructive dialogue was taking place with Iran and announcing a five-day postponement of the planned strikes on Iranian energy facilities. Oil prices plunged that day, the S&P 500 surged, and the Dow Jones jumped more than 1,000 points.

If we align the timelines of these two events, a detail becomes apparent: the "Brent leg" of the 8,600 contracts on April 7 was exactly 6,200 contracts. The same number repeated in two completely different time periods could be a coincidence or signify the same position size. In trading circles, this repetition is referred to as a "signature," indicating that a specific group of traders is executing their fixed formula. CBS's report quoted two unnamed former CFTC investigators who stated that this precise repetition "is a signal in itself for an investigation."

Nine times the norm, occurring in an unnoticed hour

Many readers who saw this news initially assumed that 19:45 GMT was "after hours." However, that is not the case. Brent crude futures trade almost 24 hours on electronic platforms, only briefly closing on weekends. 19:45 GMT is a more nuanced time point. Just a moment earlier (19:28 to 19:30 London time) marked the end of that day's "settlement window," the two minutes used by the exchange to determine the official daily settlement price.

Once the settlement window ended, the vast majority of European professional traders finished their day. The trading desks in Asia, such as those in Tokyo and Singapore, would not come online for several hours. This hour is typically one of the periods with the thinnest liquidity throughout the day. According to ICE's official product specification documents, the true peak trading volume for Brent is concentrated in the daytime hours in Europe.

When magnifying the anomaly in that minute on March 22 for a clearer comparison, it's more intuitive. According to CBS citing LSEG transaction details, the normal trading volume per minute during the same time period over the preceding five days was about 700 contracts. That minute saw 6,200 contracts traded, nearly 9 times the normal. The blue bar in the chart corresponds to that minute, while the gray bars represent other minutes in that same hour densely clustered at the bottom.

The significance of this comparison lies in the fact that the ninefold surge did not occur during the thickest liquidity hours of the day, but rather in one minute when the trading book was thinnest. When Paul Krugman discussed this on his Substack, he used an analogy, likening it to "honk the horn of a truck on an empty street in the middle of the night," either not caring about being heard or having a compelling reason to act at that moment.

Three trades in the same direction

This chart showcases another half of the anomaly from March 22 that many reports have overlooked. The Financial Times and Peak Oil mentioned in their follow-up articles at the end of March that alongside that $580 million short position in crude oil, there were two additional positions established in the same direction: one approximately $1.5 billion buy in S&P 500 E-mini futures and another $192 million independent short position in WTI (CL contract).

The "S&P 500 E-mini futures" are the most actively traded US stock index futures contracts on the exchange, with one contract corresponding to about $250,000 in S&P 500 index value, serving as a standard tool for institutions to hedge overall market direction. "Buying E-mini" equates to betting on a rise in US stocks. The "WTI segmented short position" is a separate addition to shorting another futures product line for oil (the WTI traded in the US). Combined, these three positions amount to about $2.28 billion.

Viewing these three trades separately, they resemble a paired trade that is entirely directional, betting on the same macro scenario, which is the de-escalation of US-Iran relations. How would this de-escalation affect the market? Oil supply panic would subside, leading to a drop in oil prices. Geopolitical risk premiums would disappear, resulting in a stock market rebound. Together, these three positions form the cleanest profit combination under this scenario. Paul Krugman's original words conveyed the essence, stating, "If you know you will see the words 'constructive dialogue' two hours later, these are the three trades you would make."

The same script appears in prediction markets

If we shift our perspective from the futures market to the crypto world’s prediction market Polymarket, we find an almost identical mirror image.

Polymarket is a binary prediction contract platform built on Ethereum, where users bet on whether a certain event will occur, with odds determined by market participants themselves. After confirming the outcome of the event, the winners receive payouts. All its transactions are on-chain, allowing anyone to view the historical transactions of each wallet.

According to on-chain data cited by StockTwits, in the last week of the Polymarket contract "Will the US and Iran ceasefire within 30 days?" there were 8 accounts belonging to a "normal profile," which were all public legacy accounts, betting a total of around $70,000, with some wins and some losses, and no suspicious points in the settlement process. However, simultaneously, the other 4 accounts displayed a completely different profile, all newly created wallets shortly before the event, with no prior on-chain transaction history. After their arrival, the first thing they did was to place significant bets on "there will be a ceasefire" at very low odds, ultimately winning them all, with total profits exceeding $600,000.

Between $70,000 and $600,000, the multiple in between is 8.6 times, and the profits of the latter are about nine times the total amount bet by the former. According to Polymarket's own settlement rules, the winning amount = bet amount × reciprocal of the odds. To earn $600,000 within a week means these 4 wallets either placed heavy bets at a time when the odds were extremely low (indicating that the market believed the possibility of "no ceasefire" was very high) or they diversified their bets over multiple times; on-chain data shows it was the former.

Ritchie Torres's office mentioned this detail in the letter to the SEC and CFTC, paralleling it with the anomaly in crude oil futures as evidence of a "cross-market synchronous signal." This is also why Torres had introduced a legislative proposal regarding insider trading in prediction markets for Polymarket at the end of March. For him, the side involving crude oil futures is not an isolated incident.

Will there really be an investigation?

First, let's look at the reality at the federal level. According to the SEC's law enforcement report released in early April, there were 313 new cases filed by the SEC in the past year, the lowest in the past decade, a 27% drop compared to 583 cases in the 2024 fiscal year. The CFTC did not release a comparable annual report simultaneously, but law firms Sullivan & Cromwell and Skadden, which track CFTC enforcement trends, pointed out in early April that the CFTC's enforcement department had noticeably slowed in early 2025.

However, just about a week before Torres's letter, the CFTC had announced its top five enforcement priorities for 2026. According to a summary by Sullivan & Cromwell, the top priority is "insider trading, including prediction markets," followed by "market manipulation, especially in the energy market."

The nuance here is that while the CFTC has verbally pushed this issue to the forefront, historically, it has rarely filed cases involving "single anomalous transactions" in the futures market. Past significant cases in the energy sector, such as those against Trafigura, Freepoint, and TotalEnergies in 2024, were all long-term manipulation cases in the OTC market, with cycles lasting 2 to 4 years, not targeting a one-time anomalous short position on the market.

What is likely to lead to concrete outcomes in this matter is another avenue. According to reports by OilPrice.com and Peak Oil, New York Attorney General Letitia James has been tracking a series of "timed, high-return transactions related to Trump’s public statements" using New York's Martin Act since April 2025.

The Martin Act is New York's anti-fraud securities law, which has a key characteristic not found in federal law: prosecutors do not need to prove that the defendant subjectively intended to defraud; they only need to demonstrate that the trading activity itself has objectively fraudulent characteristics to file a lawsuit. For events like "precision laying in wait," subjective intent is precisely the hardest element to prove in federal insider trading cases.

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