The World's Largest Oil Trader

How much is a social media post worth?

March 23, 7:05 am ET.

Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming that the US and Iran had held "very good, productive talks" over the past two days. He also announced a five-day pause in strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure.

The post went live before US stock markets opened. But futures markets never sleep.

Within minutes, Dow Jones futures surged over 1,000 points and S&P 500 futures jumped 2.7%. Brent crude plummeted from $113 to $98 per barrel, a drop of more than 13%. According to Fortune, by the time markets had fully digested the news, total US equity market capitalization had increased by roughly $1.7 trillion.

Consider the implications. If an ordinary trader posted something about oil supply on social media that triggered a 13% collapse in global oil prices, regulators would be knocking on their door within 24 hours.

But if you are the President of the United States, it is called diplomacy.

The Plot Twist

Iran said we never talked to him.

Iran's state news agency quoted a security official saying there had been no direct or indirect dialogue between Tehran and Washington. Iranian scholar Seyed Mohammad Marandi was even more blunt on X: "Every week at market open, Trump issues statements like this to push oil prices down. This time, he even timed the five-day pause to line up precisely with the close of the energy trading week."

When the denial hit US markets, nearly half the earlier gains evaporated. But by the close, the Dow was still up 631 points and Brent crude settled at $99.94, falling below $100 for the first time since March 11.

In other words, markets chose to believe Trump's version.

One post. Trillions of dollars swinging back and forth.

Rather saying that this is a president issuing a diplomatic statement, it was more like the world's largest oil trader placing an order.

His instruments are not futures contracts. They are the US military and Truth Social. Other traders go long or short with money. He flips the switch on war.

The 6:50 AM Question

According to CNBC, roughly 15 minutes before the post, around 6:50 AM New York time, both S&P 500 and crude oil futures saw an unusual, simultaneous spike in trading volume.

In the thin liquidity of pre-market trading, that kind of sudden, isolated surge stands out.

Fifteen minutes later, the post dropped. Oil crashed. Equity indices soared. Whoever was trading at 6:50 AM made money after 7:05 AM. In commodities markets, establishing positions ahead of major news with that kind of precision is one of the most textbook forms of insider trading.

Last April, when Trump's erratic tariff announcements were whipsawing markets, Senator Adam Schiff asked publicly: who knew what the president was going to post before he posted it? No one answered.

This time, CNBC reached out to both the SEC and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Their responses were identical: "No comment."

This is far from the first time. Trump has been moving oil prices with his words for the better part of a decade.

The Deal That Changed Everything

Trump started talking about oil prices on social media as early as 2011, long before he entered office. Bashing OPEC for market manipulation was standard fare. But there is a fundamental difference between a real estate developer ranting on Twitter and someone who can actually move the price of oil.

What turned him from "commentator" into "trader" was a deal in 2020.

Early that year, the pandemic brought the global economy to a halt and oil demand fell off a cliff. To make things worse, Saudi Arabia and Russia launched a price war, flooding the market with supply to grab market share. Oil crashed to the low $20s per barrel. American shale companies were collapsing left and right. The entire industry was in freefall.

Under normal logic, low oil prices are good for consumers. Gasoline gets cheaper. A president who cares about voters should welcome that.

Trump did the opposite.

He brought a room full of oil company CEOs to the White House. Then he personally called Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin, persuading them and OPEC to agree to massive production cuts. The goal was simple: push oil prices back up.

He then tweeted a hint that a production-cut deal was imminent. WTI crude surged 25% that day, its largest single-day gain in history.

Why save oil prices? Because the shale executives on the verge of bankruptcy were among his biggest political donors.

Public reports showed that oil billionaire Harold Hamm lost $3 billion in personal wealth during the crash and immediately lobbied Trump to intervene. NBC's headline said it plainly: "Trump wanted lower oil prices. Now he's negotiating price hikes with oil executives."

The deal boiled down to this: consumers worldwide pay more for oil, the profits flow to his political donors, and he banks campaign funding for his next run.

If the story ended there, you could file it under political horse-trading. But Trump did something no politician ever does. He admitted it openly.

At rally after rally, he told cheering crowds: "We drove oil prices too low, and had to bail out oil companies. I called OPEC. I called Russia and Saudi Arabia. I told them, 'Prices need to go up.'"

The crowd roared.

In 2023, the academic journal Energy Policy published a study analyzing every Trump social media post related to oil, spanning from his 2015 presidential announcement through his account suspension in 2021.

The conclusion: his tweets had a measurable impact on WTI crude futures prices and significantly amplified speculative activity in the market.

In other words, academia used data to confirm what every trader already knew. This man's words move global oil prices. And the 2020 episode proved he does not just have the ability to do it. He will.

From his first term to now, Trump's oil-trading toolkit has upgraded. Twitter became Truth Social. Railing against OPEC became pausing airstrikes on Iran.

But the logic has never changed: leverage the presidency's unique informational advantage and policymaking authority to engineer price swings in the world's largest commodity market.

Oil, Drones, and the Trump Trade

For the past decade, Trump made money in oil markets purely through influence.

In early March, both The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported the same story: Trump's two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, are investing in Powerus, a military drone company.

Donald Jr. is also a shareholder and advisory board member at Unusual Machines, a drone components firm, holding approximately 330,000 shares valued at around $4 million. He joined the company in November 2024, just weeks after his father won the election, with zero prior experience in drones or the defense industry.

Unusual Machines subsequently landed a US Army contract to produce 3,500 drone motors, and the military indicated plans to order an additional 20,000 parts in 2026.

Donald Jr. is also a partner at the venture capital firm 1789 Capital. According to the Financial Times, in 2025 alone, at least four portfolio companies under 1789 Capital received defense contracts from the Trump administration totaling over $735 million.

Forbes estimates Donald Jr.'s personal net worth was roughly $50 million when his father took office in January 2025. By year-end, it had multiplied sixfold.

Then, on February 28, 2026, President Trump launched a war against Iran.

Drones became the signature weapon of the conflict. As reported by The New York Times, both sides deployed drones extensively, each costing a fraction of a traditional missile. The Pentagon is now advancing a $1.1 billion procurement program aimed at deploying more than 200,000 American-made attack drones by 2027.

Days into the war, Eric Trump posted on X: "Drones are the future."

The conflict of interest is impossible to miss. A president's son enters the defense industry after his father takes office, invests in companies that receive contracts from his father's administration, and his father wages a war that consumes massive quantities of those very products.

It is no longer just oil. The Trump family business has expanded into war itself. Oil is the money Trump makes with his words. Drones are the money his sons make with their hands.

The Five-Day Option

Today is Day One of the strike pause. In five days, either negotiations show results, the Strait of Hormuz reopens, and oil prices fall further - or nothing comes of it, Iran keeps the blockade in place, and the market snaps right back to where it started.

The world’s largest oil trader has just handed the market a five-day option: war or peace. No one knows which way it goes.

But one thing is certain. If oil prices rise, his son’s drone companies get more business. If oil prices fall, he still wins on Truth Social.

No matter how it plays out, he does not lose.

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