A series of trades worth $800 million made minutes before a Truth Social post from Donald Trump sent markets swinging is an act of treason, one of America's most prominent economists has said.
An entity or several entities traded heavily on S&P 500 and oil futures, making an immense sum of money in the process.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman lashed out at the mystery traders.
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"When officers of a company or people close to them exploit confidential information for personal financial gain, that's insider trading — which is illegal," Krugman wrote.
"But we have another word for situations in which people with access to confidential information regarding national security — such as plans to bomb or not to bomb another country — exploit that information for profit.
"That word is 'treason'."
Krugman suggested the traders were either people who knew directly what Trump was going to say, or had been told by people in the know.
"Are decisions about war and peace in part serving the cause of market manipulation rather than the national interest?" he wrote.
"If you dismiss this as unthinkable, you just haven't been paying attention."
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Democratic Senator Chris Murphy demanded to know who was making the trades.
"Who was it? Trump? A family member? A White House staffer?" Murphy said.
"This is corruption. Mind blowing corruption."
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures trading, has not commented on the trade.
The Commission normally has five members, but currently only has one, a Trump appointee.
The White House dismissed any inference of wrongdoing.
"The White House does not tolerate any administration official illegally profiteering off of insider knowledge, and any implication that officials are engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting," Kush Desai told FT.
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The future market trades are not the first time eyebrows have been raised at suspicious bets before a Trump decision.
Betting app Kalshi has refused to pay out $77 million in winnings to punters who bet Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be out of office by March 1.
Khamenei was killed by a US and Israeli bombing strike hours before the deadline was reached.
Meanwhile on Polymarket, 150 accounts bet more than a million dollars that the US would strike Iran the next day.
And in January, a Polymarket user made about $570,000 betting that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro would be out of office before the end of the month.
They had doubled down on their bet hours before the US seized the leader in a military strike.
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