Coincidence doesn't wear a watch. Knowledge does.
On the morning of March 23, in the middle of the war with Iran, a handful of traders execute deals worth billions of dollars on U.S. futures markets, squeezed into a two-minute window around 6:49 a.m. They're betting that the S&P 500 stock index will rise and oil prices will fall. Fifteen minutes later, President Donald Trump decides not to attack Iran's power plants after all. The headline sends oil prices tumbling, and the markets move exactly the way the traders bet they would. The profits are substantial. Tim Skirrow, who heads derivatives trading at Energy Aspects, sees only 2 explanations for such a sequence of events. Either someone got unbelievably lucky, he says, or they knew something. You can't subpoena luck. Knowledge, on the other hand, has a sender and a path leading from the room where decisions are made to the screen where someone places a trade. In this case, that path is 15 minutes long. Plenty of time for a rumor, precious little for a coincidence.
Tracing that path is part of the job of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, the federal agency that oversees America's derivatives markets. Its analysts spot the suspicious oil trades, just as they always spot such trades. They collect the data and forward their findings to the enforcement division, where lawyers who specialize in precisely this area of law work. That's where the decision is supposed to be made on whether to investigate possible trading on inside information further. That's how quietly and routinely things have worked for years, handled by longtime professionals through an established paper trail.
The chart shows the trading volume of oil futures contracts per minute on March 23, 2026, between 6:30 and 7:30 a.m. New York time. Neon blue represents WTI (West Texas Intermediate), an American crude oil grade that serves as a major benchmark for U.S. oil prices. Neon red represents Brent, the internationally important crude oil grade from the North Sea. The height of the bars shows the number of contracts traded, with each contract covering a specified quantity of oil. Around 6:49 a.m., trading volume suddenly rises sharply, about 15 minutes before Donald Trump announces his decision not to attack Iranian power plants for the time being. Within just 2 minutes, oil futures contracts with a notional value of more than $760 million change hands. After Trump's announcement at 7:04 a.m., trading volume reaches further peaks. The central suspicion concerns the unusual trades made before his announcement. The chart documents their timing and volume, but does not yet prove that the traders involved had access to confidential information.
Our investigation is based on the following original documents and independently published trading analyses:
Historical trading data from CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), analyzed on March 27, 2026, particularly the minute-by-minute breakdown of oil futures contracts; contemporaneous trading analyses published by the Financial Times on March 23, 2026; Donald Trump's archived original Truth Social post from March 23, 2026, at 7:05 a.m. New York time, along with the corrected version published later; official publications from the U.S. futures regulator, the CFTC, concerning the responsibilities of its market surveillance and enforcement divisions; and the documented demands for an investigation issued by the U.S. Senate on April 9, 2026.
Then Mel Gunewardena steps in. He advises Michael Selig, whom Trump appointed to lead the CFTC. People familiar with the matter who wish to remain anonymous describe what happened this way: Gunewardena allegedly instructed a market surveillance supervisor to withdraw the referral. He allegedly even tried to block the route to the enforcement division altogether and collect the data on the trades himself. At first, no one in the surveillance division reportedly knew how to handle that instruction. Such a withdrawal had rarely, if ever, been requested before. That would have meant the very man who wanted to block the path to finding out what happened would also have decided which data could still travel down that path.
The intervention is unprecedented. Aitan Goelman, who led the enforcement division from 2014 to 2017, responded to a general question about such a move with a sentence that leaves no room for politeness: In no previous administration he knew of would this merely have been unusual; it simply would never have happened. It makes employees' jobs harder, he said, when they know the rug could be pulled out from under them at any moment. Oversight works from the bottom up: First the experts examine the evidence, then the lawyers make their judgment. The instruction from the chairman's circle of advisers was meant to reverse that direction and overturn the judgment before anyone had even been allowed to make one.
Gunewardena knows both sides of the table. He was an executive at Goldman Sachs and State Street Corp. He also worked for the CFTC during Trump's first term; just a few weeks before the incident, he was hired as director of the Office of International Affairs and senior market adviser to the chairman. Asked for comment, the agency declines to say anything. Gunewardena leaves the request unanswered. What never gets forwarded remains a coincidence. Officially certified.
Gunewardena knows both sides of the table. He was an executive at Goldman Sachs and State Street Corp. He also worked for the CFTC during Trump's first term; just a few weeks before the incident, he was hired as director of the Office of International Affairs and senior market adviser to the chairman. Asked for comment, the agency declines to say anything. Gunewardena leaves the request unanswered. What never gets forwarded remains a coincidence. Officially certified.
Updates – Kaizen News Brief
Alle aktuellen ausgesuchten Tagesmeldungen findet ihr in den Kaizen Kurznachrichten.
To the Kaizen News Brief In English
