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Mystery jump in oil trading ahead of Trump post draws scrutiny
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-03-24-2026/card/mystery-jump-in-oil-trading-ahead-of-trump-post-draws-scrutiny-56sgwdXtlOlonqIKDsL6 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-5...
- sega_sai 6mo agoAt this point, I would rather these people enrich themselves as long as they stop the war, but I am afraid they will continue doing both.
- soraki_soladead 6mo agoWhy would we settle for anything less than discontinuing both?
- heliumtera 6mo agoBecause you never really had any choice so you'll settle with the only hand you were dealt. Thanks for playing
- PxldLtd 6mo agoThat's the neat part, they get richer whether the war is happening or not. Some get way richer when there's a war on.
- mothballed 6mo agoThe US ended most of their subsidies to Ukraine last year. Historically the defense-industrial complex is eager to stir something else up as soon as one money source gets cut off. After Afghanistan it went to Ukraine, and after Ukraine it has to be something else. This is the unstoppable flow of the defense industry moving to a new outlet.
- metabagel 6mo agoThe U.S. didn't invade Ukraine. We gave Ukraine a lot of old stuff from our stockpiles and bought new stuff for ourselves. It's generally not called a "subsidy". It's called "foreign aid".
- throwa356262 6mo agoCan you be sure the war was not actually started to enrich those people?
- filoeleven 6mo agoIt certainly makes more sense than any of the explanations proffered by the regime so far.
- ixlixl 6mo ago[flagged]
- readitalready 6mo agoIt's why WTI crude never exceeds $100/barrel. Every time it gets that high the insider in the administration shorts it and the administration announces a new policy delaying more strikes.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- mothballed 6mo agoYou don't even need to trade oil, trading gulf country assets also works well. And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable if Iran blows it up and the assets will be available cheap.
- themafia 6mo ago> And rebuilding the gulf should be quite profitable Wait. I've heard this story before. Let's ask any of the recently "liberated" countries how that worked out for them...
- appletrotter 6mo agoGermany?
- themafia 6mo agoSure. If you go back 80 years and past several pointless wars you can find one example. Wherein the USA fought with a world wide coalition to defeat the Nazi's only after war had been declared by the Nazi's against the USA.
- CrzyLngPwd 6mo agoGermany is occupied by the USA, it isn't liberated at all.
- some_random 6mo ago
- ChrisArchitect 6mo agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47496508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47496508
- loudmax 6mo agoCharlie Sykes, a founder of the Bulwark podcast, has a story about it here: https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/a-vivid-snapshot-of-trumpian-corruption https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/a-vivid-snapshot-of-trum... Some highlights include a $580 million dollar bet on oil futures 15 minutes before Trump made the announcement of talks with Iran, which the Iranian government denied actually happened. Naturally, political appointments at the SEC are preventing investigation.
- chasd00 6mo agoI mentioned this in another topic by Trump mentioned the pause before the TruthSocial post in an interview on FoxNews. I can't remember who it was with but I think her name started with an "M". If I can find a link and timestamp i'll come back and edit this post.
- T-A 6mo agoAfter, not before: FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo spoke with Trump shortly after the post, and Trump stressed, "Iran wants to make a deal badly." https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-orders-war-dept-postpone-strikes-iranian-energy-sites-citing-productive-talks-end-war https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-orders-war-dept-postp...
- chasd00 6mo agomy mistake, i can't go back and edit my comment otherwise i would.
- NikxDa 6mo ago[flagged]
- iAMkenough 6mo agoYeah, you're right. Guess we shouldn't talk about what's happening now or do anything to address it.
- LogicFailsMe 6mo agoOr just legalize it across the board recognizing that when only the powerful can make use of it. and we're not going to do anything about the powerful, we might as well let everyone else in on the game. That is truly my cynical mindset at this point. The degree to which my trading is regulated is beyond absurd in a market and society where things like this are allowed to happen.
- jakelazaroff 6mo agoHow exactly would someone with no special access, knowledge or power get in on the game? Legalizing it across the board would just make things worse.
- conductr 6mo agoThey would be smart enough to know/assume it’s a rigged game they are playing and stay away from it. The veil of laws and regulations is a lie when they’re not enforced
- conductr 6mo agoReminds me of a debate in college. I was in college during the baseball doping days in early/mid 2000s and gave a debate presentation that the only way to make it a fair sport is to allow it for everyone; basically there should be no rules. The class vehemently disagreed but purely on emotion, no solid defenses were made that I couldn’t counter with a simple logic rebuttal. In any case, I tend to agree with you. The laws are only on the books to make naive people feel like there money is being looked after and the asset values aren’t manipulated. Remove the laws and the layman is a skeptic by default as he should be.
- hermitcrab 6mo agoWhat a massive coincidence!
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Kenji 6mo ago[dead]
- fraywing 6mo agoI'm growing pessimistic that this kind of activity + the egregious presidential-level crypto scams will never see justice. What's the path for that, really?
- quink 6mo agoGetting rid of the delusion of American exceptionalism in how politics is conducted. In other words, do something about the two party system, or the pardon power or any number of things, the possibilities are endless. But doing anything about it would require admitting that the USA is something other than perfect, so it’ll never happen. Too bad really. At least the USA is only 4% of the world’s population so the world economy will just find other financial hubs and currencies, no big loss.
- quink 6mo agolol, others are saying elections to solve economic concerns. If that solves it why do you keep re-electing Republicans given this context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidential_party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p... sure the next election might fix it temporarily but the one after that will just just tank the economy again. Or overturn insider trading bans or issue pardons, the possibilities for chaos are endless and — fun fact - investors abhor regulatory uncertainty.
- tmountain 6mo agoWhy do we? You say this as if the country is a single organism and in lock step with the current administration. I have never voted for a republican in my life and never will, but now, somehow, all 350 million Americans just fit into one big bucket?
- quink 6mo agoBecause at this point all the people in all the other countries do not care who you voted for, especially not after he caused an insurrection and a Democratic Party administration didn't do anything to prosecute that. At this point all the people outside the US just want to know what you're going to be doing about this insanity.
- heyitsmedotjayb 6mo agoI'm not smart enough to understand why - but surely this isn't sustainable? At some point wont the price not reflect the reality of simply not having gas to put in your car? What is going on... The price of oil went down 10% yesterday, opened +0% today and is back to +4%...
- 4ndrewl 6mo agoIt's beyond simple supply and demand. This was in response to a social media post that had a tenuous relationship with reality (or 'fluid' as the Whitehouse now calls it).
- derektank 6mo agoMost oil benchmarks are futures contracts, so they don’t reflect the spot or current price. So commodities traders are trying to predict the situation 2-4 weeks from now
- thrance 6mo agoOil price is famously disconnected from how much is being pumped out of the ground at any given time. But eventually, yes, if the conflict lasts for long enough material reality will catch up with markets (or is it the other way around?).
- vmbm 6mo agoIt is very difficult to ship and store oil in the volumes that are relevant to modern economies. We are very much in a situation where some regions are business as usual, some regions can't get oil at any cost, and some regions have so much oil they are stopping production because they don't have any where to store it. In terms of how this impacts prices, the headline number is usually Brent crude, but there are a number of different "flavors" with various geopolitical factors that influence price[1]. For example, the US market is going to respond differently then the Indian market. The former is a net exporter halfway across the globe from the conflict area, the later gets a substantial portion of their oil through the Strait of Hormuz. If the conflict carries on for a while things will probably normalize across markets as production and shipping adjust to the new reality. But in the short term you are going to have some folks mildly inconvenienced by slightly higher prices, while other folks might not even be able to fill their tanks. []1 https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/ https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/
- atemerev 6mo agoWell if Democrats ever win, there will be a lot of fine investigations for years ahead.
- gib444 6mo agoNancy Pelosi could head up the investigation. She knows a lot about it after all
- atemerev 6mo agoThere is a Russian proverb, "Everyone pees in the pool, but not everyone does it from the diving board"
- bakies 6mo agoInsider traders prosecuting insider traders? Don't hold your breath
- refurb 6mo agoThey already tried for 4 years starting in 2016. It was all a bust even when they played loose with facts.
- burnt-resistor 6mo agoDemocrats: 75% corrupt, Republicans: 99% corrupt. Voting and irrational optimism aren't going to change a corrupt, captured system that cannot and refuses to be reformed.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- andix 6mo agoPeople got exactly what they voted for. It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so serious.
- Bratmon 6mo ago[flagged]
- KK7NIL 6mo agoNo idea why you're getting downvoted, this is absolutely true. The people have lost faith in both parties, we now expect our leaders to be cronies.
- lepset 6mo agoPeople just don't like the "both sides are the same" clownery anymore. It's not true and will never be true.
- Bratmon 6mo agoSo are you asserting that Nancy Pelosi wasn't insider trading when her party was in power?
- lepset 6mo agoYes I am asserting that, there is no proven evidence she was. Congressional stock trading is legal.
- KK7NIL 6mo agoThere's no "proven evidence" (whatever that means) that people in the Trump administration are insider trading either, yet we can see some very suspicious ripples in the market. Pelosi was even more obvious as we know all of her trades, their timing and her outrageous outperformance during that period.
- Swoerd 6mo ago[dead]
- leontloveless 6mo ago[dead]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- iberator 6mo ago[flagged]
- KK7NIL 6mo agoOil futures are infamously not cash settled, which is why they went negative during COVID.
- jmyeet 6mo agoIt’s almost like turning the president into a monarch by baselessly granting total immunity was a bad idea, foreseeably so. This is the new normal. I want people to really think about what’s going on here. $1-2 billion of taxpayer money is being spent every day to literally kill people for stock and futures trades. And nobody will be punished for this. Anyone who gets a whiff of legal trouble will just buy a person. At some point this is going to destroy even the appearance of market integrity.
- gosub100 6mo agoTrump is compromised by blackmail and we are fighting the war for Israel.
- tmountain 6mo agoWhat could he possibly be blackmailed for at this point? There are zero consequences to anything he says or does.
- gosub100 6mo agochild abuse
- tmountain 6mo agoThat evidence is already available. Nothing has changed.
- fallingfrog 6mo agoHaving proof on video of trump sexually assaulting a minor would still be significant, I think. Such footage probably exists and would make great leverage.
- tmountain 6mo agoThe Epstein files identify a pretty horrific incident involving Trump and a 14 year old girl, but it doesn't seem to have changed much so far. I suppose a video would be more compelling, but of course there'd be denials saying it was AI, etc.
- unyttigfjelltol 6mo ago1. By a show of hands, who was surprised that the cataclysmic warnings of the weekend subsided into talk of diplomacy on Monday? 2. Let’s hypothesize the US gov’t or allies did pre-release this info to traders as a policy tool, inviting them to sell oil profitably, shaping the later price action . In a practical sense they may have brought more speculators to the short side than otherwise would have been there; is that scenario really beyond the pale? 3. News of war and sovereign relations on an international stage necessarily will test the boundaries of traditional law of confidentiality and fair practices.
- inaros 6mo agoIf you run the numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504505 You will see, that anything else other than a ground invasion, is guaranteed to give Iran a war victory.
- saidnooneever 6mo agoif a ground invasion goes they will destroy oil trade and everyone is screwed. The war should not be won. it should be ended before everyone loses.
- inaros 6mo ago>> The war should not be won. it should be ended before everyone loses. My analysis and my comment I linked to agrees. And that is a strategic victory for Iran, Russia, China and a defeat for Israel, and the US. The worst will be the Gulf States hostages of their dueling stock pile of defense missiles running out...to which they will have to queue for, with US DOD at the front of the queue.
- password54321 6mo ago>a defeat for Israel False, Israel has used the whole war to take over Lebanon almost silently from mass media attention. They are about to annex a part of it.
- josefritzishere 6mo agoAfter a year of frequent insider pump and dump scams, is it too pessemistic to assume this is another one? I'm trying to find something hopeful.
- renewiltord 6mo agoAs Nancy Pelosi says: "We’re a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that."
- chasd00 6mo agoJust so everyone is aware, Trump mentioned the deal in an interview before his post on TruthSocial. So if you're thinking all the trades that happened just before the TruthSocial post are insider trading maybe the traders where just watching the news. If i can find a link to the interview i'll come back and edit this post with a link and where it fits in the wsj timeline.
- NegativeLatency 6mo agoMartha Stewart was sent to prison for less
- tombert 6mo agoI hear this a lot, but she did deserve to be punished. Her defense tried to act like she innocently and accidentally sold some stock based on something a friend told her, but they neglect to mention that she her career started as a stock broker and as such should have been familiar with regulations, and she was on the New York Stock Exchange’s board of directors during the scandal. It's not some innocent mom who accidentally listened to some advice, she really should have known better.
- tmountain 6mo agoShe was targeted because James Comey wanted to leverage her fame for his own career advancement. Not justifying what she did, but it’s no coincidence that she got roped.
- hydrogen7800 6mo agoI may simply be ignorant of the details of this case, but I never heard James Comey's name until ~October of 2016.
- jacquesm 6mo agoThat's on you then.
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo agoWell, she was also targetted because of all the crimes
- NegativeLatency 6mo agoI'm not saying she's innocent, I just think that we should apply the same standards to everyone, or change/remove the standards.
- chunky1994 6mo ago@dang, this has way more discussion than the previous threa,d but people can't see this because it's a dupe.
- dang 6mo agoYes, I'm not sure what happened. Restored now. p.s. @dang doesn't work - I only saw this randomly. For reliable (if sometimes delayed!) message delivery use hn@ycombinator.com.
- ting0 6mo agoThere's no mystery here. His son Oil Barron Trump has been doing the same thing, along with Trump, in the crypto markets and online prediction markets for years now. They've made over a billion easy.
- HerbManic 6mo agoOil Barron... You know we should have seen that coming. Always assume reality to sometimes be more unrealistic than low grade fiction.
- filoeleven 6mo ago4 billion in one year [EDIT] in total, not just in crypto. https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677024/trump-profits-merch-hotels-crypto https://www.npr.org/2026/01/14/nx-s1-5677024/trump-profits-m...
- dang 6mo ago(I changed the URL from https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-03-24-2026/card/mystery-jump-in-oil-trading-ahead-of-trump-post-draws-scrutiny-56sgwdXtlOlonqIKDsL6 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-5... because there doesn't appear to be any readable workaround for the latter)
- OutOfHere 6mo agoIt might in theory be great to have an AI bot do this for all links of known paywalled sites if a good quality free alternative is available and discoverable by the AI bot. The bot could use the web search tool of an LLM service for this purpose. If not available, it could keep rechecking every fibonacci hour for up to 21 hours.
- zahlman 6mo agoThat just gets us links from whichever SEO spam farm is best at prompt-injecting LLMs into believing they provide a "good quality free alternative".
- OutOfHere 6mo agoIt doesn't have to be that way. An allowlist of domains can be built over time. Also, the bot's suggestions can initially be vetted by a human. As for prompt injection, there are additional ways to mitigate the risk using domain exclusion, roles, and input validation, but I guess unimaginative AI haters will find any excuse to be haters.
- ratrace 6mo ago[dead]
- krunck 6mo ago> A [whitehouse] spokesman told the Financial Times that it did not "tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge". So the Trump administration is passing on information for others to profit from in exchange for something else. Totally legal. Right?
- mikeyouse 6mo agoLikely just family members. Those seem to be off limits: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-secs-ex-enforcement-chief-clashed-with-bosses-before-leaving-sources-say-2026-03-23/ https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/us-secs-ex-enforcem...
- mikewarot 6mo agoI'm not sure if this is parody or not, but someone admitted to it. These days it wouldn't surprise me if it were this brazen. https://x.com/gothburz/status/2036413487530831899 https://x.com/gothburz/status/2036413487530831899
- aftbit 6mo agoThat reads like it was generated by Claude. Seems like parody but I dunno.
- kulahan 6mo agoYeah, the entire thing strikes me as AI-generated. Something about the cadence of the text makes it clear for me?
- bz_bz_bz 6mo agoClearly a parody account...
- chatmasta 6mo agoThat’s a parody account. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but if you cannot tell this is parody within the first two sentences then you should be very careful when reading twitter. This is a common format and other accounts are far more pernicious. My feed in the morning often starts with a dozen parodies or outright falsehoods with no community note. I wouldn’t be surprised if they “let” it happen by optimizing for double clickthrough engagement produced by the inevitable “grok is this true?” at the top of every thread. The worst part is that the only way to develop immunity to, and pattern recognition for, these parody accounts is to subject yourself to them repeatedly. So the people who can recognize the fake tweets the quickest are also the people who read them the most. And there are plenty who never develop the pattern recognition… It’s definitely some form of social infection.
- slg 6mo agoPoe’s Law meets The Big Short’s convergence of confessing and bragging[1]. It adds up to being completely opaque in terms of veracity and intent, but either way it highlights the real problem at the center of this story. [1] - https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ut4C64FKfqc https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ut4C64FKfqc
- asd198 6mo agoThe same people will have call options on Friday: - Pakistan has a defense treaty with Saudi Arabia. - Saudi Arabia has been attacked. - Witkoff claims to negotiate with Iranians in Pakistan and Iran denies it. Witkoff has a horrible track record in that either the negotiations fail or are a precursor to attacks. - What better way to spend time in Pakistan than to recruit a proxy and promise US money to the cash-strapped government?
- tokai 6mo agoWitkoff is a foreign asset. It insane how he's allowed to undermine us interest again and again.
- vonneumannstan 6mo agoThis administration has taken grift and corruption to a level only seen in banana republics. I seriously don't know how you come back from this. GOP voters seem to be openly cheering it.
- jacquesm 6mo agoBanana republics can't hold a candle to this.
- filoeleven 6mo agoThis is a bananas foster republic.
- yorrkhunt 6mo ago[dead]
- ck2 6mo agobut the real crime this war will most certainly still be going on by the end of 2026 and at that point will have cost half a trillion dollars US oil producers are THRILLED at these prices (as well as Russia) he can't just end the war, not only his call anymore if US leaves the strait no oil will ever get through and there are 150 tankers currently waiting, maybe forever
- keeganpoppen 6mo agois anyone else really starting to get fucking tired of this bullshit? yes, it is not an unprecedented, nor unique, phenomenon, but, like, it just feels so blatant. and i say this as someone who doesn’t reflexively hate everything trump does. i do, of course, dislike most things he does, but i do so in what i consider to be a fairly sympathetic and open-minded way. but this is just, like… kleptocracy, no?
- SlightlyLeftPad 6mo agoYes I’ve been tired of the bullshit for a while. We’re living in one of the most overtly corrupt government regimes in the United States history. We’ve elected the practical equivalent to Al Capone. Meanwhile, homelessness has never been higher. Rent, food, gas, electricity, healthcare, and so on have never been higher. All while jobless rates are increasing, salaries are decreasing, benefits cut. Richer is getting richer. At what point does the scale tip?
- wesselbindt 6mo agoVery mysterious
- apparent 6mo agoWere there any moves on Polymarket or other platforms that could have triggered these trades in the "real" market?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- barryfandango 6mo agoMany of us use site analytics software that can watch what our users are doing in our apps. Also, Truth Social has a feature where you can schedule a post (that feature is part of the upgraded "partriot package".) Either one of these features might have the truth social staff getting early access to the president's truuts.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- thewileyone 6mo agoIt's not much of a mystery. It's pretty apparent what is happening.
- bigfatkitten 6mo agoPulling the rug so his family members and other associates can buy the market dip.
- aaron695 6mo ago[dead]
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- ramesh31 6mo ago"We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too. They of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. The lie has become not just a moral category, but the pillar industry of this country."
- archon810 6mo agoI would just like to know who this was at least.
- ayeshaahmad_w 6mo agoOne trade is a coincidence. Tariffs, crypto, Iran talks — each time markets move right before the announcement. That's not coincidence anymore, that's infrastructure.
- tsoukase 6mo agoIt's not mystery. Any US military engagement has multiple benefits: 1) direct increase and profit for weapon companies, military contractors and oil people 2) show the world who the boss is and everyone should stay under the wing 3) propagate fear globally and keep people aligned And this time another one is added 4) shorting and gambling of active politicians having insider knowledge
- balderdash 6mo agoIsn’t this just about the easiest thing to investigate (at least to know the parties n loved and the purported basis for the trade)?
- SturgeonsLaw 6mo agoIf they want to, yeah it's all traceable. They just don't want to.
- burnt-resistor 6mo agoPrison and recovery of ill-gotten proceeds of crimes for all the crooks and most billionaires who are criminals too.
- rrrx3 6mo ago"Mystery" doing a whole lot of heavy lifting in that headline
- fallingfrog 6mo agoAnd who was the person or group who made correct predictions in advance of the announcement? Why not just say who it was?