The insider trading suspicions looming over Trump’s presidency
Market watchers noted unusual instances of trading just ahead of Donald Trump’s major foreign policy announcements [Bloomberg via Getty Image]
During US President Donald Trump’s second term, traders placed millions of dollars in bets just before Trump made major announcements.
The BBC examined trading volume data across various financial markets and matched it with some of the president’s most significant market-moving statements.
He found a consistent pattern of increases just hours, sometimes minutes, before a social media post or media interview becomes public.
Some analysts say this bears the hallmarks of illegal insider trading, meaning bets are made by people based on information not available to the general public.
Others say the picture is more complex and that some investors have become more adept at anticipating the president’s interventions.
Here are five of the most important examples.
Some of the biggest movements occurred in oil trading on the futures market.
Nine days into the US-Israeli war with Iran, Trump told CBS News in a phone call that the conflict was “pretty much over.”
[BBC]
18:29 GMT: Oil bets on the rise
19:16 GMT: Trump says war is almost over
19:17 GMT: Oil fell 25 percent
The public first heard about the interview at 3:16 PM Eastern Time (19:16 GMT) when reporter X shared the interview.
Oil traders reacted to this news by selling oil, saying the conflict could end much sooner than expected and the price could fall by around 25%.
However, market data shows that a large wave of bets were placed on the oil price falling at 18:29 GMT (exactly 47 minutes before the reporter’s post).
Traders who place these bets will have earned millions of dollars from the movement in oil prices.
On March 23, just two days after threatening to “destroy” Iran’s power plants, Trump posted on Truth Social that Washington was having “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE TALKS” with Tehran regarding a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL SOLUTION” to hostilities.
It was a big surprise for diplomatic observers and traders.
[BBC]
10:48-10:50 GMT: Oil bets on the rise
11:04 GMT: Trump shares ‘total solution’ to hostilities
11:05 GMT: Oil fell 11 percent
Stocks immediately rose and the climbing US oil price fell sharply.
As the BBC reported at the time14 minutes before the president’s inauguration, there was an unusually high number of bets on the US oil price.
The same pattern was seen in traders buying contracts for Brent crude, the other major oil benchmark.
The trade looked “absolutely abnormal”, an oil analyst told the BBC at the time.
Apart from the war in the Middle East, there are other notable examples of commercial activity.
On April 2 last year, on what he called Independence Day, Trump announced a sweeping set of tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.
Stock markets around the world lost value.
But a week later, stock markets rose when Trump announced a 90-day “pause” on tariffs for all countries except China.
The benchmark S&P 500 index increased by 9.5 percent, making one of the biggest single-day gains since the Second World War.
18:00 CEST: Investors began making big bets on the stock market’s rise
18:18 BST: Trump announces he will pause tariffs
18:19 BST: The stock market is on a historic rise
Again, prior to the announcement of a fund tracking the S&P 500, these events were preceded by an unusual trading pattern with an unusually high number of bets.
The number of contracts traded rose above 10,000 per minute just after 18:00 GMT. Earlier in the day, that number was in the hundreds.
Some traders bet more than $2 million that the stock market would rise that day, even though it had lost seven days in a row. This huge increase could have given them almost $20 million in profit.
Later that week, several top Democrats in the U.S. Senate wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) urging the financial regulator to investigate whether the president’s announcements “enriched administration insiders and cronies at the expense of the American public.”
When asked whether the BBC was investigating these allegations, an SEC spokesman declined to comment.
Meanwhile, the White House did not respond to a BBC request for comment on the unusual trading activity analyzed in this report.
One user won $436,000 betting that Nicolás Maduro would leave office at the end of January [Reuters]
December 2025: Installer-Mix account created
January 2, 2026: The account deposited 32 thousand dollars for the overthrow of Maduro
January 3, 2026: Maduro was captured and Burdensome-Mix made $436,000
The recent growth of online prediction markets has also caught the attention of observers.
Blockchain-powered platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi offer users the chance to speculate on everything from the weather to baseball to US foreign policy.
President Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an investor in Polymarket and serves on its advisory board. He also serves as Kalshi’s strategic advisor and has contacted the BBC for comment.
In December 2025, a user created an account with the name Burdensome-Mix on Polymarket. On December 30, he placed his first bet that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from office by the end of January 2026.
Between December 30 and January 2, Burdensome-Mix invested a total of $32,500 into the position.
When Maduro was captured and overthrown by US special forces the next day, Burdensome-Mix earned $436,000.
Shortly afterwards he changed his account username and has not placed any bets since.
Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February, according to blockchain analysis site Bubblemaps.
Everyone bet that the US would attack Iran on February 28. Between them, the accounts gained $1.2 million when the attacks were confirmed by President Trump earlier that day.
Five of these six users have not placed any further bets since, but one of the accounts last event It shows he made $163,000 betting toward a U.S.-Iran ceasefire by April 7, which Washington and Tehran announced that day.
Polymarket told the BBC it “sets, maintains and enforces the highest standards of market integrity”, adding that it was working “proactively” with regulators and law enforcement to do so.
In March this year, both Polymarket and Kalshi outlined new rules to curb insider trading.
Prediction markets are 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 turned out that the White House sent a message. internal email to staff Last month we warned them not to use insider information to bet on prediction markets.
Spokesman Davis Ingle told the BBC at the time that “any insinuation that administration officials engaged in such activities without evidence was unfounded and irresponsible reporting.”
Insider trading has been illegal for most Americans since the passage of the Securities Act in 1933.
It was expanded to include US government officials in 2012, but to date no one has been prosecuted under the law.
Paul Oudin, a professor specializing in financial regulatory law at ESSEC Business School, says the rules are difficult to enforce.
“Financial authorities will not launch an investigation if they cannot find out who the source of the information is,” Oudin says.
None of the US financial authorities contacted by the BBC acknowledged the insider trading allegations.
“You can make huge transactions on a financial instrument that clearly shows that someone knows what Donald Trump is going to announce,” Oudin says.
“There is a strong possibility, though, that no one will be prosecuted,” he adds.
