A BBC report on the financial market revealed consistent patterns among traders. Some appear to be making perfectly timed bets before Donald Trump makes a major market-moving announcement.
These announcements can affect oil prices, stocks, and even political outcomes. Some analysts say this may be a sign of illegal trading, with a select few having non-public information.
The BBC looked at the trades made from April 2025 to the previous month, focusing on the conflict with Iran and U.S. involvement in Venezuela. They found that the oil market was the most affected.
BREAKING: The BBC has reported that there appears to be “insider trading consistently happening in the Trump administration before announcements.”
— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 20, 2026
When Trump told CBS News that the conflict with Iran was “very complete, pretty much,” a large number of bets were placed on oil prices falling before this news reached the public. About 47 minutes after those bets were made, his statement was released, and oil prices dropped by almost 25%.
On March 23, a surge in oil trades happened about 14 minutes before Trump announced a “complete and total resolution” with Iran. When his post dropped, oil prices fell 11%, while stocks rose.
One oil analyst told the BBC the timing was “abnormal, for sure.”
Other than this, before Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs on all countries except China, in 2025, traders placed large bets that stocks would rise. Again, minutes after his announcement, markets surged with the S&P 500 jumping 9.5% in a day.
Several senior Democrats in the U.S. Senate also urged the Securities and Exchange Commission, the financial regulator, to investigate this issue. They wanted to see if Trump’s announcements “enriched administration insiders and friends at the expense of the American public.”
Another unusual instance occurred when a Polymarket user placed a $32,500 bet that Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from power by the end of January 2026. Just one day later, Maduro was captured in a surprise U.S. operation, and the user made $436,000 in profit.
Donald Trump Jr. is an investor in and an unpaid advisor to Polymarket, CNBC reported.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., even led a bicameral bill to stop government officials from profiting from prediction markets, especially on war or government decisions.
New data analysis has found a pattern of major spikes ahead of public actions from Trump, furthering suspicions of insider trading.
The analysis uncovered 6 Polymarket accounts created right before the US struck Iran that won a total of $1,200,000 on predicting the military… pic.twitter.com/6ipF1bkcRd
— Headquarters (@HQNewsNow) April 20, 2026
He also stated, “I think we need to build a grassroots constituency around ending these corrupt prediction markets,” adding, “But Donald Trump, his family is completely integrated and making money off of Kalshi and Polymarket.”
Other experts also claimed that traders may simply have become too adept at predicting Trump’s announcement patterns, as the BBC noted.
Paul Oudin, a professor specializing in financial regulation law at the ESSEC Business School, stated that it would be difficult to stop this. “The financial authorities will not carry out a prosecution if they can’t figure out who the source of information is,” Oudin said.
