British media: Oil price crash raises questions about "insider trading" in the Middle East

Just 15 minutes before US President Trump posted a tweet about the US-Iran dialogue on social media, an unusually large transaction worth approximately 580 million US dollars (about 742 million Singapore dollars) occurred in the international crude oil market, triggering speculation about "insider trading".

Xinhua News Agency quoted the British Financial Times on Tuesday (March 24th) as reporting that at 6:49 am New York time on the 23rd, about 6,200 Brent crude oil and West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures contracts were exchanged.

According to data calculated by Bloomberg, the nominal value of these contracts reached 580 million US dollars. As crude oil futures trading volume suddenly increased, the S&P 500 stock index jumped instantly, and trading volume also significantly expanded simultaneously.

The report said that Trump later posted a tweet at 7:04 am, saying: "Over the past two days, the United States and Iran have had very good and productive discussions on a comprehensive and thorough solution to our hostile actions in the Middle East." This news triggered a significant sell-off in the global energy market.

As investors lowered their bets on the prolonged conflict, S&P 500 index futures and European stock markets rose simultaneously.

The report believes that such "timely and precise" transactions are "identical" to the situations that occurred previously when the US attacked Iran and Venezuela. Many hedge funds said that this is one of the many cases of large-scale advance trading that occurred in recent months before the US officially announced major news.

The report quoted a large hedge fund trader as saying that energy consulting agencies have recently noticed multiple large transactions with abnormal time points.

Another investment manager said that a series of timely and precise large transactions have already caused "strong dissatisfaction" among investors.

It was reported that later that night, Iranian Parliament Speaker Kaliabaf posted a message on social media, clearly denying any negotiations between the US and Iran. This statement immediately triggered a fall in global stock markets, and the energy market saw buying again.

Kaliabaf said, "The purpose of spreading 'false news' is to manipulate the financial and oil markets, so that the United States and Israel can get out of the quagmire they are in."