Market watchers have highlighted several examples of unusual trades ahead of Donald Trump’s major foreign policy announcements. [Bloomberg via Getty Image]
Throughout US President Donald Trump’s second term, traders have been betting millions of dollars before he makes major announcements.
The BBC has examined trade volume data on several financial markets and matched them with the president’s most important market-moving statements.
It found a consistent pattern of spikes in the hours or sometimes minutes before a social media post or media interview went public.
Some analysts say it bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, in which people make bets based on information not available to the general public.
Others say the picture is more complicated and that some traders have become more adept at anticipating presidential intervention.
Here are five important examples.
Some of the biggest movements have occurred in the oil futures market.
Nine days after the US-Israeli war with Iran, Trump told CBS News in a phone interview that the conflict was “very, very complete.”
[BBC]
18:29 GMT: Oil bets increased
19:16 GMT: Trump says the war is almost over
19:17 GMT: Oil fell by 25 percent
The first time the public knew about the interview was at 15:16 Eastern Time (19:16 GMT) when a reporter posted about it on X.
Oil traders reacted to the news that the conflict could end much sooner than expected by selling oil, with prices falling by around 25%.
However, market data showed that at 18:29 GMT large bets were placed on oil prices falling – a full 47 minutes before the reporter’s post.
Traders who place those bets stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars from movements in oil prices.
On March 23, two days after threatening to “wipe out” Iran’s power plants, Trump posted on Truth Social that Washington had “very good and productive talks” with Tehran on a “full and complete resolution” of hostilities.
This was a great surprise to diplomatic observers and businessmen.
[BBC]
10:48-10:50 GMT: Oil bets increased
11:04 GMT: Trump posted about a “total resolution” to hostilities
11:05 GMT: Oil fell by 11 percent
Immediately, stocks soared and the US benchmark price of oil – which had been climbing – fell sharply.
As the BBC reported at the time, there was an unusually high number of bets on US oil prices in the 14 minutes before the presidential inauguration.
A similar pattern was seen when traders bought contracts for the other major oil benchmark, Brent crude.
As one oil analyst told the BBC at the time, the trades appeared “unusual, for sure”.
Away from wars in the Middle East, there are other examples of business activity that have raised eyebrows.
On April 2 last year, Trump announced what he called Liberation Day — a comprehensive set of tariffs on goods from practically every country in the world.
Stock markets around the world are falling.
But a week later when Trump announced a 90-day “pause” on tariffs for all countries except China, the stock market rallied.
The benchmark S&P 500 index jumped 9.5% – one of its biggest single-day gains since World War II.
18:00 BST: Traders are betting big as the stock market rises
18:18 BST: Trump announced a tariff pause
18:19 BST: A historic boom has begun in the stock market
Again, a fund tracking the S&P 500 had an unusual trading pattern prior to these events, with an unusually high number of bets ahead of the announcement.
Just after 18:00 BST the number of contracts traded reached 10,000 per minute. The previous day this number was in the hundreds.
Some traders bet more than $2 million on the rising stock market that day, even though it was seven days in a losing streak. A large increase could generate them a profit of around $20m.
Later that week, several senior Democrats in the US Senate asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the financial regulator, to investigate whether the president’s announcement “enriched administration insiders and cronies at the expense of the American people.”
Asked whether the BBC had looked into the allegations, an SEC spokesman declined to comment.
The White House, meanwhile, did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment on any of the unusual business activities analyzed in this report.
A user won $436,000 betting on Nicolas Maduro being out of office by the end of January [Reuters]
December 2025: Burdensome-Mix account created
2 January 2026: The account puts $32,000 toward Maduro’s ouster
3 January 2026: Maduro was captured and Burdensome-Mix won $436,000
The recent growth of online prediction markets has also drawn scrutiny from observers.
Blockchain-powered platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi allow users to speculate on anything from the weather to baseball to US foreign policy.
President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an investor in Polymarket and sits on its advisory board. He also serves as a strategic adviser to Kalshi and has been contacted by the BBC for comment.
In December 2025, a user created an account on Polymarket called Burdensome-Mix. On 30 December, it made its first bet that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would be out of office by the end of January 2026.
Between December 30 and January 2 Burdensome-Mix placed a total of $32,500 in the position.
When Maduro was captured by US special forces and ousted the next day, Burdensome-Mix won $436,000.
After some time, the account changed its username and has not placed any bets since.
According to blockchain analysis website Bubblemap, 6 accounts were created on Polymarket in February.
All have condemned a US attack on Iran by 28 February. After President Trump confirmed the attacks in the early hours of that day, the accounts earned $1.2 million between them.
Five of those six users have not placed any bets since, but the account’s recent activity shows it earned $163,000 by April 7 by correctly betting on the US-Iran ceasefire, which was announced that day by Washington and Tehran.
Polymarket told the BBC that it “sets, maintains and enforces the highest standards of market integrity” and that it works “actively” with regulators and law enforcement.
In March this year, both Polymarket and Calci introduced new rules to curb insider trading.
Prediction markets come under the jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The CFTC did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment, but its chairman recently told a congressional committee that his organization has “zero tolerance” for fraud and insider trading.
It also emerged that the White House sent an internal email to staff last month, warning them not to use inside information to make bets on prediction markets.
Spokesman Davis Engel told the BBC at the time, “Any implication that administration officials are involved in such activities without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting”.
Insider trading has been illegal for most Americans since the Securities Act was passed in 1933.
It was expanded to cover US government officials in 2012, although no one has been prosecuted under the law to date.
Enforcing regulations is difficult, says Professor Paul Odin, an expert in financial regulatory law at ESSEC Business School.
“The financial authorities will not prosecute if they cannot find out who the source of the information is,” Odin says.
None of the US financial officials contacted by the BBC admitted any allegations of insider trading.
“You could have a huge trade in a financial instrument that clearly shows that somebody was privy to something that Donald Trump was about to announce,” Odin says.
“Yet there is a strong possibility that no one will be prosecuted,” he adds.
