Rep. Sam Licciardo, D-Calif., attends a press conference with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus during the House Democrats’ 2025 Issues Conference at the Lansdowne Resort in Leesburg, Virginia, on March 13, 2025.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call Inc. | Getty Images
Rep. Sam Licciardo, D-Calif., is investigating whether the nation’s top financial regulator is investigating a number of transactions made just before President Donald Trump provided a major update on the Iran war.
In a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig, shared exclusively with CNBC on Friday, Ricardo said he wrote to “express alarm over recent reports indicating large trades in oil prices and S&P 500 E-mini futures shortly before the President announced action or inaction on Iran.”
“The timing indicates that the bets were made by people who had advance knowledge of the President’s actions and strongly suggests illegal trading in insider information in violation of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, and the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012,” Ricardo wrote.
Reuters reported on April 8 that a huge bet on oil was made hours before the US-Iran ceasefire, and it paid off handsomely.
“This transaction is the latest in a series of well-timed large trades that took place just before the president announced the United States’ next actions in the Iran war,” said Ricardo, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees securities and exchanges.
Several other deals amid the Iran war have also drawn scrutiny. On March 23, a series of trades in CME’s S&P 500 e-Mini futures market caused a sudden and isolated spike in volume. A similar trend appeared in the oil market.
The deal came about 15 minutes before President Trump posted on Truth Social that the U.S. and Iran would hold talks and postpone expected attacks on civilian infrastructure. The market then rallied and oil futures fell.
US regulators are reportedly currently investigating the deal, led by the CFTC. In his letter, Ricardo also asked the SEC to open an investigation.
Ricardo also took aim at prediction markets, saying, “The large, surprisingly well-timed wartime bets on prediction markets and stock options related to stock trading ahead of President Trump’s tariff announcement strongly suggest a pattern of insider corruption.”
Ricardo said a recent White House memo instructing government officials not to engage in insider trading activity in prediction markets provides “little reassurance.”
“No federal public servant needs to be ‘reminded’ of the blatant illegality of personal financial enrichment through the misuse of confidential information collected through public servants,” he wrote.
Ricardo asked Atkins whether the SEC has launched an investigation into the transactions and what tools the SEC has to investigate the transactions. He also asked for information on how regulators can crack down on insider trading in prediction markets and what efforts they are taking to prevent government officials from profiting from insider information.
