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Traders place $760M bet on falling oil ahead of Hormuz announcement(reuters.com)
51 points by Jimmc414 13 hours ago | 15 comments
chopete3 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>> Investors placed a bet

Aren't these more of gamblers?. There is no real asset they are investing in.

alex43578 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Oil futures are absolutely a real asset - this isn’t Kalshi “who wins an Oscar” junk. Oil futures let consumers like airlines hedge prices, so their role in price discovery and liquidity is important.

throwup238 an hour ago | parent [-]

When we had that oil glut years ago and traders couldn’t unload their futures, they found out the hard way that futures meant they were legally obligated to take delivery of real oil and store it, causing a mad scramble to figure out what to do with it when storage started running out.

bix6 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is it possible to trace this stuff back to individuals? Would love AI to do that.

Jimmc414 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Since it's commodities it would be the CFTC, but it would be trivial since brokers are required by law to collect KYC information on all futures trades and anyone holding positions above the Large Trader Reporting threshold (a few hundred contracts for crude) is already disclosed to the CFTC by name. 7,990 lots of Brent in a one minute window is enormously above that threshold.

jackyinger 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would love it if real people did that, and then acted on what they found with moral integrity.

Grosvenor 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes, if the SEC decides to they can trace it back to specific orders.

Will the SEC decide to?

an0malous 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The orders are coming from… inside the house??

11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
walletdrainer 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

CFTC, SEC does not regulate commodities but securities.

yieldcrv 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

SEC could find out because of the ETFs that trade the same underlying assets

JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Is it possible to trace this stuff back to individuals?

Yes, depending where the trades were based and their market participants' KYC rigor.

As the article mentions, the CFTC "is examining a series of trades in oil futures placed shortly before major shifts in President Donald Trump's Iran war policy" [1]. If the "lots of Brent crude futures" the article mentioned traded on the Intercontinental Exchange [2], when we can almost certainly trace it back to at least some individuals.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-probes-suspicious...

[2] https://www.ice.com/products/219/Brent-Crude-Futures/data

ulfw 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would love human with brain to do that.

watwut 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why AI? You want tracker that dont hallucinate.

But, you also need DOJ that prosecutes rich guy white crime, so.

refurb 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If this trade is based on inside information, it would be on the Iranian side since it's timed on the IRGC's X post.

That seems like a smart move by Iran. Get rich off your own announcements.