There is a structural problem in modern politics that we don’t talk about enough.
Markets move on information. Governments create information. And in an age of erratic communication, that information is often released in ways that are unpredictable, informal, and badly timed.
Take Donald Trump. One of the defining features of his recent presidency has been the tendency to make market-sensitive announcements abruptly — on tariffs, foreign policy, or conflict — often outside conventional channels.
That matters. Timing matters.
Because when announcements come late in the day, or after markets close, they don’t remove volatility — they concentrate it. They create windows in which the right positioning can be extraordinarily profitable.
And we are now seeing trades that, at the very least, look uncomfortably well timed.
In early 2026, regulators began examining large oil trades placed just before policy shifts on Iran. In at least two cases, traders placed very large bets on falling oil prices shortly before de-escalatory signals emerged. When those signals became public, prices dropped and the trades paid out heavily.
In another instance, hundreds of millions of dollars were positioned on falling oil prices shortly before news that tensions in the Strait of Hormuz would ease. Again, the trade proved highly profitable almost immediately.
Separately, prediction markets and derivatives platforms have seen large bets placed shortly before major geopolitical events — including airstrikes and ceasefire announcements — with some participants making substantial gains from positions taken just hours before the news became public.
None of this proves insider trading. That needs to be said clearly.
But it does establish a pattern:
large, concentrated bets placed just before market-moving political events.
We have seen something similar before.
During the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, currency markets moved violently. Sterling collapsed, and those positioned correctly made vast sums. Most of it was legal. But it showed how political shocks can create asymmetric gains for those who are prepared — or informed.
More recently, there was another awkward episode. In April 2025, Trump publicly suggested that it was “a great time to buy” shortly before announcing a tariff pause that sent markets sharply higher. Options trading activity surged just before the announcement, raising questions — though no wrongdoing was proven.
Again: not proof. But not comfortable either.
The regulators tasked with policing this are not especially well equipped for it. Bodies like the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are small by design, with limited resources relative to the scale and speed of the markets they oversee. Their leadership are Trump appointees — as is standard in the United States — which places them unavoidably close to the political system they are supposed to scrutinise. That does not mean they lack independence. It does mean they operate within constraints: limited capacity, complex cases, and a political environment in which the stakes are unusually high.
The issue here is not a single trade or a single decision.
It is the structure.
When policy is unpredictable, when communication is informal, and when market-moving decisions are made in tight circles, the opportunity for advantage increases. Not necessarily illegal advantage — but advantage nonetheless.
And that advantage is difficult to monitor.
Insider trading is notoriously hard to prove. Trades can be routed through intermediaries, disguised, or simply lost in the noise of high-volume markets.
Which means that the real question is not:
Can we prove wrongdoing in each case?
It is:
Have we created a system in which it would be surprisingly easy to get away with it?
and
Are individuals close to the US Government deliberately creating market volatility in order to profit from it?
None of this requires conspiracy.
It requires proximity.
If political decisions move billions of dollars in minutes, then access to information — even slightly earlier than the public — becomes incredibly valuable.
And in a system where information is concentrated, informal, and inconsistently released, that value is hard to police.
That is the vulnerability.
Not that every trade is corrupt.
But that the system makes it very difficult to believe that none of them are.
When governments can move billions of dollars with a sentence — and do so unpredictably — the incentives are obvious.
Some people will always be closer to that information than others.
And once markets begin to look like a place where proximity matters more than insight, they stop being markets in any meaningful sense.
And these are markets which we all depend on, and which Governments depend on to raise money. We are only 18 years from the last global financial crash. America is building a system where a new crash would make some people stratospherically rich, while pauperising millions.