Throughout the second term of Donald Trump, Wall Street has witnessed a series of stock market moves that, for many market observers, cross the line from financial shrewdness into the realm of federal crime. An exhaustive BBC investigation has cross-referenced transaction volume data with the exact moments of presidential pronouncements, revealing a consistent and unsettling pattern: million-dollar and highly precise bets placed only minutes or a few hours before key announcements that shake the markets are made public.
This phenomenon has raised alarms among analysts, who note that these operations possess all the characteristics of illegal insider trading (insider trading). Speculators appear to be betting based on high-level geopolitical information — such as the end of a war or massive tariff changes — that is not yet available to the general public, making astronomic gains within minutes.
The five most significant examples of 2026
1. March 9: The end of the war with Iran
Nine days after the start of the armed conflict between the U.S. and Israel against Iran, Trump told CBS News that the war was “practically over.” Markets reacted by plunging crude oil prices by 25%. However, the data show a massive spike in bets predicting this drop at 18:29 GMT, 47 minutes before the first news report about the interview was published on X (19:16 GMT). Those who placed these bets won millions.
2. March 23: The resolution of hostilities
A mere two days after threatening to “eliminate” Iran’s power plants, Trump posted on Truth Social that Washington had had “VERY GOOD CONVERSATIONS” about a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION.” Immediately, crude fell by 11%. The BBC reported that, 14 minutes before the president’s message, there was an unusually high number of bets on the drop in the price of U.S. oil. An analyst described the move as “abnormal, without a doubt.”
3. April 9, 2025: Pause on ‘Liberation Day’
An earlier example than 2026 but just as revelatory. After imposing global tariffs on April 2, Trump announced a 90-day pause a week later. The S&P 500 jumped 9.5%, one of the largest daily gains since World War II. Again, large bets preceded the announcement. The volume of contracts surged to more than 10,000 per minute just after 17:00 GMT, when the daily average was in the hundreds. Some speculators won close to $20 million betting on the rise, despite the market having seven days of losses. This prompted Democratic senators to demand an SEC investigation into whether people with insider information and government friends enriched themselves.
4. January 3, 2026: Maduro’s capture
The BBC’s analysis extends to the new online prediction markets driven by blockchain, such as Polymarket. An account named Burdensome-Mix, created shortly before, bet $32,500 that Nicolás Maduro would be ousted. The following day, Maduro was captured by U.S. special forces and the account earned $436,000. Immediately afterward, it changed its username and has not bet again. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., is an investor and adviser on these platforms.
5. February 28, 2026: Attacks on Iran
According to Bubblemaps, six accounts created in February on Polymarket bet that there would be a U.S. attack on Iran before February 28. When Trump confirmed the attacks that day, the accounts earned a combined profit of $1.2 million. Five of them have not bet again. A sixth account earned another $163,000 by correctly predicting a ceasefire announced on April 7.
Official silence and difficulty of proof
Despite the forcefulness of the charts, U.S. financial authorities (the SEC and CFTC) have declined to comment specifically on these allegations. The White House did not respond to BBC requests either. Although government insider trading has been illegal since 2012 (the STOCK Act), no one has ever been prosecuted under this law. Paul Oudin, a professor of financial regulation, notes that “authorities will not pursue a case if they cannot determine who the source of the information is.” He concludes that, even though the trades clearly demonstrate the use of advance knowledge, “there is a strong likelihood that nobody will be prosecuted.”
