Investors placed a bet worth about $760 million on a falling oil price around 20 minutes before Iran’s foreign minister announced on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was open, another sizeable wager on the world’s most traded commodity ahead of major announcements in the course of the Middle East war.
Large, well-timed trades in recent months have drawn concern from U.S. lawmakers and legal experts that decisions around war and diplomacy can give some traders an edge in volatile and opaque derivatives markets.
* Between 1224 GMT and 1225 GMT investors sold a combined 7,990 lots of Brent crude futures, according to LSEG data.
* Based on the price at the time, these trades were worth about $760 million.
* At 1245 GMT, Iran’s foreign minister posted on X that passage for all commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz was declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire, in line with the ceasefire in Lebanon.
* The announcement pushed crude down as much as 11% on the day in the minutes that followed.
* Reuters reported that on April 7 that bets worth around $950 million took place just hours ahead of the U.S. and Iran announcing a two-week ceasefire. On March 23, investors sold $500 million in oil futures 15 minutes before U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement that he would delay attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure, triggering a 15% drop in the crude price.
* The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating a series of oil futures trades, including those on March 23 and April 7, that were placed shortly before major policy shifts by Trump related to the war in Iran, a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Kirsten Donovan)