Trump's Pre-Tweet, Crude Oil Sees Unusual Sell-Off: 6 Million Barrels of Futures Sold in Advance, Suspected "Mickey Mouse Operation" Triggers Manipulation Concerns

BlockBeats News, March 24th, according to ICE data, before the severe fluctuation in international oil prices triggered by U.S. President Trump's key tweet on the Iran issue, the crude oil futures market had already shown significant abnormal activities. The time window of large-scale short selling concentration overlapped highly with the announcement time, leading the market to question the existence of a "Wash Trade" or insider trading.

Data shows that in a short two-minute window from 6:49 to 6:51 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, at least the equivalent of 6 million barrels of crude oil futures contracts were massively sold off, involving both the Brent Crude Oil and WTI Crude Oil benchmark contracts. In contrast, the average trading volume in the same time window over the past five trading days was only about 700 contracts (about 70,000 barrels), making this transaction's scale nearly 9 times larger.

Approximately 14 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump tweeted about the Iran situation. The market sentiment swiftly changed, and the intraday price of crude oil experienced a maximum decline of up to 14%. The significant price swing was highly correlated with the earlier abnormal selling behavior, sparking widespread discussions in the market about "Wash Trades."

From a trading structure perspective, such large-scale selling in a short period usually requires institutional-level funds to execute and results in obvious liquidity shocks. Some traders pointed out that this type of operation is more akin to "Event-Driven Front-Running," where traders establish short positions ahead of significant public disclosures to capture excess profits once the news is released.