Wall Street's top regulators should investigate unusual trading activity in oil and equity futures markets shortly before President Donald Trump postponed military strikes against Iran last month, a lawmaker said Wednesday.
"There's something suspicious about the sheer speed, scale and structure of the trade," Representative Ritchie Torres said in an interview after sending a letter to the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. "The facts are so glaringly obvious neither the SEC nor the CFTC can afford to ignore them."
The New York Democrat called on the regulators to open a formal investigation into trading in oil, energy, and equity futures markets in the minutes before Trump's March 23 social media post and obtain trading records for accounts related to the transactions.
The SEC declined to comment about the letter. The CFTC didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Billions of dollars in futures changed hands shortly before Trump announced that he would postpone strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. The president had earlier threatened to attack within 48 hours unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for oil tankers.
Financial contracts tied to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate were sold in the two minutes from 6:49 a.m. in New York that day, according to exchange data compiled by Bloomberg.
During the same period over the prior five trading days, the average was about 700,000 barrels. Trump's Truth Social post was published at around 7:05 a.m. that morning.
CFTC Enforcement Director David Miller in late March said the regulator was "watching" trading in the oil futures market for unusual activity but said he couldn't comment on what the agency may or may not be investigating.
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