An anonymous trader allegedly bought approximately £1.17 billion ($1.5 billion) in S&P 500 futures and sold approximately £150 million ($192 million) in oil futures five minutes before President Trump announced a pause in planned strikes on Iran, triggering immediate allegations of insider trading from a senior US senator and a Nobel Prize-winning economist.
On 26 March 2026, Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted on X drawing attention to trade data flagged by market-tracking account Unusual Whales. The data indicated the positions; orders described as four to six times larger than anything else moving through the market at that hour were placed during thin premarket conditions, in an otherwise quiet session with no scheduled economic data or Federal Reserve speakers.
