The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating a surge of more than $800 million in oil futures trades that occurred moments before President Trump announced on social media that he was postponing strikes on Tehran’s energy infrastructure, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The trades were executed during off-hours on March 23, minutes before Trump’s Truth Social post, and traders on the right side of those bets profited when U.S. oil prices fell as much as 13 percent in the post’s wake. At least five firms posted gains of $5 million or more on crude futures that day, the newspaper reported, citing trading records. 

The CFTC is trying to determine whether an insider with prior knowledge of Trump’s post traded on that information or leaked it to someone who could, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the WSJ.

The regulator is focusing on at least three firms, according to the report. London-based investment firm Qube Research & Technologies earned about $5 million in adjusted gains, while Forza Fund Ltd., which is linked to Chinese firm Metabit Trading, netted roughly $10 million. Totsa, the trading arm of TotalEnergies, posted a roughly $200,000 profit, the Journal reported. 

None of the firms has been accused of wrongdoing. Some told the CFTC their trading decisions were driven by a Semafor headline published roughly 15 minutes before Trump’s post that reported the White House was considering an exit from the Iran conflict, according to people familiar with the investigation cited by the newspaper.

The March 23 episode is not isolated. The CFTC is also examining several other instances of suspicious trading around Iran-related announcements in April and May. On May 6, roughly $700 million in crude futures changed hands about an hour before a report on talks to end the Iran war, according to Dow Jones Market Data cited by the newspaper.

Among other firms that recorded significant gains on oil futures on March 23, quantitative firm Jane Street gained about $19 million in adjusted terms, while U.K.-based Paragon Trading Partners netted roughly $3 million and Tower Research Capital earned more than $3 million. Not all large traders profited, the newspaper noted. High-frequency firm Jump Trading lost about $15 million that day, according to the report. 

Democrats have alleged that people connected to the administration could be profiting from well-timed bets as mysterious trades have accumulated across markets during the war, the Journal said.

The White House warned staff on March 24 against improperly leveraging their positions to place bets in futures markets and said ethics guidelines prohibit employees from using nonpublic information for financial benefit, according to the newspaper. At a congressional hearing in April, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig declined to speculate on how information about Trump’s post might have leaked, but said the agency had a zero-tolerance policy toward fraud, abusive trading, and manipulation.

Newly disclosed records on Trump’s investments reveal that his portfolio executed more than 3,600 trades in the first quarter of 2026, including buying and selling shares in large banks, manufacturing firms, and tech companies. The records have fueled criticism that he has “blurred the line between his private interests and the public good,” and raised questions whether some of the trades were times around his public endorsements of the same companies, The New York Times said Tuesday.