The White House circulated an internal warning advising staff not to use confidential information to place trades in futures markets after a burst of suspicious oil trading timed ahead of President Donald Trump’s March 23 announcement on Iran, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, the email was sent on March 24, a day after Trump ordered a five-day delay in attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure. Exchange data analyzed by Reuters showed roughly $500 million in Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude futures were purchased in a one-minute burst shortly before the announcement. Oil prices later fell by about 15% after the policy shift.
The episode has intensified concerns that officials or politically connected traders could profit from nonpublic information related to military or policy decisions. It has also added momentum to efforts in Washington to tighten rules on prediction markets and trading based on privileged information.
Federal law already restricts some forms of insider trading: an amendment to the Commodity Exchange Act, known as the STOCK Act amendment, bars federal officials, members of Congress, executive staff and judicial officers from using non-public information derived from their positions to trade commodities, futures or options. That amendment was signed into law on April 4, 2012.
Cointelegraph has reached out to the White House seeking a copy of the internal email.
Lawmakers have stepped up scrutiny of prediction markets following other well-timed bets tied to military and political events. Separately, Polymarket traders were reported to have netted about $1 million by correctly betting on when the U.S. would strike Iran, a pattern that raised similar insider-trading concerns.
In response to those concerns, Representatives Adrian Smith and Nikki Budzinski introduced the bipartisan Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act (PREDICT Act) on March 25, which would ban members of Congress and federal officials from trading on prediction markets. On March 26, Representatives Todd Young, Elissa Slotkin, John Curtis and Adam Schiff unveiled the bipartisan Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act of 2026 to curb insider trading by government officials in prediction markets. That same day, Senator Jeff Merkley introduced the End Prediction Market Corruption Act, which would ban event-contract trading by government officials who possess “material non-public information,” including the president, vice president and members of Congress.
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