The BBC has contacted the White House for comment. A spokesman told the Financial Times that it did not “tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge”.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission did not respond to a request for comment. The Securities and Exchange Commission declined to comment.
Global financial markets have been rocked by the Middle East conflict, with share prices sliding as the cost of oil and gas soared, but on several occasions hope of a potential end to the war has seen volatile movements with oil falling sharply and stock markets rising.
On Saturday, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it did not re-open the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil and gas normally pass, within 48 hours.
Markets were closed that day, but fell sharply across Asia when they re-opened on Monday morning, while the price of oil started to climb.
However, at 07:04 Eastern Time (11:04 GMT) on Monday, before US markets opened for the week, the president posted on his Truth Social platform that Washington had held “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS” with Tehran over a “COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION” to hostilities.
Immediately, stocks bounced and the price of oil dipped to as low as $84 (£63) per barrel for the benchmark US price.
Observers have since scrutinised what happened in financial markets in the minutes leading up to the president’s post.
At 06:49 ET, traders placed 734 bets on WTI crude oil contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex).
One minute later, that number had jumped to 2,168. That’s equivalent to about $170m.
The same pattern can be seen in traders buying contracts for Brent crude, the other major oil benchmark. Between 06:48 and 06:50 ET, the volume of trades rose from 20 to more than 1,650. That’s about $150m in contracts.
Data for previous Mondays shows that far fewer trades are normally made at that time of day.
Similar trades also happened on Monday with futures contracts for the S&P 500, Euro Stoxx 50, and other markets.
This means traders placed bets on the value of the largest firms listed in the US and Europe rising minutes before Trump’s announcement.