The White House warned staff against using confidential information for trading after suspicious oil futures bets appeared ahead of an Iran-related announcement by Donald Trump. Roughly $500 million worth of bets on Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude were placed minutes before the policy shift, after which oil prices dropped about 15%.

The incident has raised concerns about insider trading tied to geopolitical decisions. Existing rules under the STOCK Act already prohibit federal officials from using non-public information to trade commodities, futures, or options markets.

Lawmakers are now also scrutinizing prediction markets after traders reportedly profited from correctly betting on U.S. military actions involving Iran. Several new proposals — including the PREDICT Act and the End Prediction Market Corruption Act — aim to ban government officials from trading event-based markets using privileged information.