Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Golem (@web 3_golem)
Whether Trump is a competent president is hard to say, but he is definitely an excellent financial market manipulator.
On March 23, Trump started his antics again regarding the US-Iran conflict. At 19:05 Beijing time, he posted on Truth Social, stating that the US and Iran had productive discussions over the past two days and that all military strikes targeting Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure have been delayed for five days.
As soon as these words were out, gold, which had been dropping for days due to inflation concerns and rising global interest rate hike expectations, instantly rebounded. According to Gate data, after Trump's post, gold that had fallen all day rebounded over $200, and S&P 500 index futures also rose nearly 4% in response. Meanwhile, Brent crude oil fell from a high of $113 per barrel to a low of $97, a drop of over 14%.
But less than an hour later, Iranian media came out to "debunk" this, saying there had been no direct or indirect contact between the US and Iran. Iran's Tasnim News Agency even quoted a senior Iranian security official stating that Trump's related remarks were "psychological warfare."
Faced with this rebuttal, Trump tried to brush it off with a simple "I don't know what Iranian media is talking about." To casual observers, this might just seem like another instance of T.A.C.O. (Trump Always Chickens Out), but for traders, it was a mix of joy and sorrow. Because this series of events caused market fluctuations exceeding trillions of dollars within just a few hours.
According to The Kobeissi Letter, 15 minutes before Trump's post, a large buy order for S&P 500 futures with a notional value of $1.5 billion inexplicably appeared in the market. The order was so large that it directly pushed the S&P index up about 0.3% in one minute. And 15 minutes later, this trader/institution who opened the $1.5 billion position pocketed $60 million.
Besides this one who maximized gains, there were also traders who perfectly timed the market top. According to the Financial Times, also 15 minutes before Trump's post, approximately 6,200 Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures contracts were sold, with a notional value of $580 million.
Placing large buy or sell orders just before major market news is announced—this looks less like news trading and more like classic insider trading. But whether the source can be traced back to Trump is hard to say. After all, it's not the first time Trump has done something like this. Iranian scholar Seyed Mohammad Marandi posted on platform X, "Trump makes these kinds of statements every week when the market opens to suppress oil prices. Even the five-day deadline he set coincidentally aligns with the energy market's closing time."
This means those trades that seem like insider trading could also be top-tier traders who have figured out Trump's pattern. It wouldn't be strange at all if Wall Street started studying Trump himself as a separate market trading indicator, because this method of his to influence the market isn't the first time he's played it, and it's been remarkably effective every time.
Last year's tariff turmoil was the most typical example. On April 7, 2025, US stocks were being battered by Trump's reciprocal tariff policy when news suddenly emerged that the White House was preparing to suspend tariffs for 90 days for most countries except China. The news caused the Dow Jones to surge about 800 points, but later the White House came out to debunk it as "fake news," and the Dow eventually closed down 629 points that day.
Not many people suspected that this rumor might have been spread by interests related to Trump, but the answer soon appeared.
On April 9, Trump first promoted his own stock on Truth Social, saying verbatim "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT". A few hours later, he announced a new tariff policy, which was no different from the "fake news" the market heard 2 days earlier—suspending "reciprocal tariffs" for 90 days for countries that did not take retaliatory measures, but raising tariffs on China to 125%. The market took off again instantly, with the three major US stock indices all rising, marking a large single-day rally not seen for many days.
A mediocre manipulator can only use one piece of good news to create one wave of rises, but Trump can use one piece of good news to create two.
Now, against the backdrop of war, every statement from leaders and official media of the conflicting parties naturally carries a price lever. A tough statement can send gold soaring on the spot; a conciliatory statement can also cause risk assets to rebound immediately,上演 "words becoming reality" in the financial markets.
Meeting a master like Trump, even prediction markets that claim to get ahead of the truth of events can be spun in circles. According to monitoring by Odaily Seer先知频道, after Trump posted that US-Iran discussions had made good progress, the probability of the event "US and Iran will cease fire before March 31" on Polymarket quickly rose to 54%. After it was discovered to be a farce, the probability of this event quickly fell back to 16%, and has now dropped to 12%.
Does Trump intentionally manipulate the market? The answer is certainly yes. But is it just for making money? If you think so, you are ignoring another, more cost-effective business—the political dividends behind a rising stock market. Trump, coming from a business background, calculates this economic account clearer than anyone else.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised that if he won the election, he would usher in a brand new era of Trump economic prosperity. But economic construction also takes time, and economic prosperity is itself a subjective concept for ordinary people—having money to spend is prosperity, not having money is not. Therefore, Trump urgently needed an immediate indicator to prove to voters that he was delivering results, so stock market prosperity became the best "substitute" for economic prosperity.
During his first term, Trump repeatedly touted new highs in the Dow Jones and S&P, almost treating the stock market as his personal governance scorecard. But every time Trump talks up the market, he aims to please not just stockholders, but also the capital and business owners behind them, because they are often either already or will eventually become Trump's political donors.
This script has already been played out in the crypto field. Trump was previously called the first "Crypto President" of the United States because during the 2024 US election year and early 2025 after Trump was elected president, he frequently extended olive branches to the crypto industry, such as participating in crypto industry conferences, making various crypto promises, and enacting crypto-friendly decrees. Each time, it brought upward momentum to the crypto market. In return, the crypto industry gave Trump support from tens of millions of US voters and hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations from crypto companies.
Manipulating the market without the purpose of making money also allows Trump to find loopholes in the law. Previously, countless US lawmakers and regulatory officials have accused Trump of manipulating the crypto market for profit, but these accusations ultimately came to nothing because there is no direct evidence that Trump obtained economic benefits from the market.
After the March 23 farce, some also accused Trump of涉嫌 insider trading. White House spokesperson Kush Desai stated that the White House does not tolerate any officials using insider information for illegal profit, provided there is evidence. But the "profit" referred to here mostly means economic benefit. And Trump? He has long withdrawn from his family business and moved behind the scenes,施展 intricate political and commercial手段 within the gaps of the law.
This is where Trump's true "brilliance" lies. He knows that in this world, power trumps money; but he also understands how money, in turn, influences the power structure.
