In the United States, accusations have begun to emerge that those messages full of threats and capital letters from President Donald Trump could contain something more than outbursts and the ‘particular’ communication style of the American president. The White House has had to respond to questions about one of Trump’s latest publications on his own network, Truth Social. Specifically, because it had a special impact on the markets and on Wall Street, causing the price of oil to plummet by 10%.
An investigation by the prestigious salmon newspaper has x-rayed the economic movements that took place yesterday, a quarter of an hour before the message in which Trump assured that he had had conversations with Iranian authorities and there would be a retaliation for the closure – partial for Tehran’s allies, total for Western companies with links to the US – of the .
Regardless of the fact that this Tuesday, Trump’s publication was interpreted as a new message between the lines to some runaway markets that had seen the price of black gold rise again above the barrier of one hundred dollars a barrel of brent – it exceeded 120 -. Thus, between 6:49 and 6:50 a total of 6,200 futures contracts were registered, both for Brent oil and for West Texas Intermediate – the reference crude oil in the US.
Thousands of financial movements in an instant, but in a context of maximum uncertainty
A quarter of an hour before Trump’s publication, but in just one minute, thousands of movements were made in a particularly turbulent and uncertain economic context. The public debate was moving, both on the other side of the pond and in Europe, around whether sending thousands of reinforcement marines to the Middle East would respond to a plan for a land invasion of enclaves such as Jark Island or other Iranian territories. It was in that context, in which everything indicated that the cost of crude oil would continue to run amok, when Trump pressed the publish button.
According to the calculations of The Financial Timesanalyzing data from Bloombergthe nominative value of the operations amounted to a whopping 580 million dollars. Just 27 seconds before 6:50 a.m., both trading volumes, both Brent and Texan, skyrocketed simultaneously. In the immediately following moments, this dynamic was transferred to the futures markets—in the S&P 500 index—.
At 7:04 a.m., Trump published his message on Truth Social, causing the price of oil that had just changed hands of thousands of contracts to fall and causing sharp rises in the aforementioned stock market index. Asked about the possibility that the content of Trump’s message about Iran was previously known in a segment of the market, the White House denied it.
“The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiting by taking advantage of privileged information”
Kush Desai, one of the White House spokespersons
“The only goal of President Trump and his administration officials is to do what is best for the American people,” replied Kush Desai, one of the Trump Administration’s spokespersons. He also assured that “the White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiting by taking advantage of privileged information,” to end by launching a clear threat to the media: “And any insinuation that officials participate in such activities without evidence is unfounded and irresponsible information.”
The statements of a stock portfolio manager to the Financial Times about how he lived and interpreted the past day, making it clear that we are facing an anomaly. “After observing the markets for the last 25 years, my intuition tells me that this is really abnormal,” he said, pointing out that “it is Monday morning, there is no important data today, there is no Federal Reserve spokesperson who should be anticipated.”
“It’s an unusually large operation for a day without event risk (…) Someone just got a lot richer”
In his opinion, “it is an unusually large operation for a day without risk of events…”, but it is also accompanied by a truism: “Someone just got much richer.” This is a scenario that does not agree with Tim Skirrow, head of derivatives at the consulting firm Energy Aspects, who told the aforementioned salmon media that “this is a larger volume than usual.” [tanto de Brent como de WTI] “what one would expect at that time of day, but at the same time it is not excessively large.” With that series of ingredients, “it is a little difficult for me to find a logical explanation.”
