An anonymous trader has opened a $51.5 million short position on Brent crude with 5x leverage on the blockchain trading platform Hyperliquid, a contrarian bet against oil prices that have surged more than 55% in March alone — the benchmark’s steepest monthly climb on record.
The position was entered at $102.13 a barrel with a liquidation price of $141.89. Brent futures climbed 2.5% to $115.45 on Monday, March 30, as Yemen’s Houthi militants fired missiles at Israel and President Donald Trump told the Financial Times he wanted to seize Iranian oil assets — pushing the mark price roughly $13 above the short’s entry and leaving the trader sitting on an unrealized loss of approximately $2.7 million. The position liquidates at $141.89, leaving about $26 of headroom from current prices.
On March 23, Unusual Whales flagged that traders bought approximately $1.5 billion in S&P 500 futures and sold $192 million in oil futures five minutes before Trump announced on Truth Social a pause in planned US strikes on Iran.
Read: Someone Bought $1.5 Billion in Futures Before Trump’s Iran Post
The Financial Times independently found that roughly 6,200 Brent and WTI contracts worth $580 million changed hands in a single minute — four to six times the normal volume for that hour. S&P futures jumped more than 2.5% and crude shed roughly 6% in the minutes that followed.
Neither the SEC nor the CFTC has confirmed opening a formal investigation into the March 23 trades. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy called the activity “mind-blowing corruption,” while legal experts note there is no explicit US law barring the use of non-public information to trade futures contracts. The White House denied any impropriety.
Analysts warn that the oil supply buffer is thinning fast. BCA Research geopolitical strategist Marko Papic estimated the conflict has removed 4.5 to 5 million barrels per day from global supply and projected that figure to double by mid-April as strategic reserve releases near exhaustion. For the trader holding $51.5 million short against that tide, markets will render a verdict well before regulators do.
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