U.S. Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres on Tuesday wrote to U.S. market regulators pushing for an investigation into large oil trades placed just hours before the announcement of the U.S.-Iran ceasefire that Reuters first reported last week. Torres, who wrote to regulators last week to push for a probe into lucrative recent trading activity on oil markets back in March, on Tuesday urged Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig to open a joint investigation into the trades.
* Reuters on April 8 reported that in the space of one minute, investors placed trades the previous day that bet on a fall in the oil price worth roughly $950 million a couple of hours before U.S. President Donald Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, which knocked crude futures down by some 15% at the start of regular trading on April 8.
* “If accurate, the timing and scale of these trades warrant immediate scrutiny,” Torres said in his letter.
* Other Democrats have also raised concerns about timely trades around major U.S. policy events. Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, in a letter released on Friday, called upon regulators to investigate unusually large commodity and equity trades that closely preceded major White House decisions on Iran, Venezuela and tariffs.
* Oil prices have shot up in hugely volatile trading by around 40% to above $100 a barrel since the start of the Iran war that has effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global daily energy supplies usually flow.
* Representatives for the SEC and CFTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Michelle Price and Keith Weir)