Neil Freiman

oil prices fell back down to earth, plunging nearly 10% to close below $90 a barrel.

Wall Street was ecstatic to hear progress on a diplomatic end to a conflict that had already caused the biggest energy supply shock in history and was inflicting more economic damage by the day.

Of course, nothing is so clear-cut.

After Trump's post, Iran denied that any conversations had taken place with the U.S.

and accused Trump of manipulating financial and oil markets with his announcement.

One thing we can assume, the timing wasn't a coincidence.

Trump made the announcement just hours before trading opened at 9.30 a.m.

Eastern, suggesting that, as we saw with Liberation Day tariffs, he is well aware of market dynamics and was aiming to signal to Wall Street that an off-ramp was coming into view.

Whether that's actually true or not, we don't know.

Oh, these were extremely suspicious, just the timing of it.

Almost $600 million, 15 minutes before this Truth Social post, the Financial Times talked to a couple of portfolio managers about whether this was unusual or not.

One of them said,

is this is really abnormal.

It's Monday morning.

There's no important data today.

There aren't any Fed speakers.

It's an unusually large trade for a day with no event risk.

Somebody just got a lot richer.

And it wasn't just a bunch of money put in the oil markets.

It was also S&P 500 futures, which spiked well over 1% after this Trump announcement.