Reports that president Trump may simply declare victory and walk away, leaving Iran in control of the straits, suggest the US president is tiring of the war. But such a situation would be unsustainable, and leave Iran with the ability to hold the global economy hostage. At the end of 2025, oil prices, which had been in decline for most of the year, stood at around $60 for Brent and $56 for WTI. Prices had risen through January and February, but Trump’s war in Iran unleashed a huge surge in oil prices that has seen Brent nearly double and WTI up 80%.

Our paper aims to provide the empirical grounding and legal analysis necessary to close that gap. To examine whether there is a broader pattern, we developed a systematic statistical screening of all Polymarket markets from February 2024 through February 2026—a universe of over 93,000 distinct markets and nearly 50,000 unique wallet addresses. The screening combines five signals—cross-sectional bet size, within-trader bet size, profitability, pre-event timing, and directional concentration—into a composite score measuring the probability that a given (wallet, market) pair reflects informed trading rather than lucky speculation. The unit of analysis is the wallet-market pair rather than the wallet itself, as an insider may have advance knowledge about one event but not others. In the hours before the February 28, 2026 U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran—one of the most closely guarded military operations in recent history—six newly created Polymarket wallets collectively earned approximately $1.2 million by purchasing ‘Yes’ shares in the ‘US strikes Iran by February 28?

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A February 2026 Federal Reserve Board study finds that Kalshi’s macroeconomic prediction markets achieve accuracy on CPI and GDP releases that rivals or exceeds professional forecasts, with rich intraday dynamics that daily data entirely miss. Perhaps the surprising thing is that oil prices are not higher than their current levels. A closure of the Straits of Hormuz is set to throw the global economy into disorder, as the impact of the closure ripples through markets and economies.

Why Match Fixing Is Criminal — But Trading on Geopolitics Isn’t

$143 million is a conservative lower-bound estimate of anomalous profits extracted over two years from a single platform. These profits represent transfers from uninformed retail participants to those with access to material non-public information—a regressive outcome that undermines the democratic appeal of prediction markets as venues where ordinary forecasters can profit from accurate beliefs. Whether this is normatively desirable depends on one’s views as to whether the Hayekian benefits of centralized pricing justify the social costs (if any) of gambling of this sort. Second, the CFTC’s principal anti-fraud vehicle for commodity derivatives—Rule 180.1, modelled on SEC Rule 10b-5—is narrower than its securities law analogue in certain respects. For one, it is unclear that Rule 180.1 yields a Cady Roberts-style duty to disclose, and trading on ‘lawfully obtained’ commercial information, without deception or fraud, remains legal.

Trading Halts

• A closure of the Straits of Hormuz is set to throw the global economy into disorder, as the impact of the closure ripples through markets and economies.
• When it concerns personal social knowledge, the profits represent monetization of relationships and confidences.
• This episode is striking because it is hardly the first time this has occurred.
• As mentioned above, the US economy has yet to feel the full impact of higher oil prices.

Financial instruments that represent a tonne of CO₂ removed or reduced from the atmosphere.

It is unclear that the bill would have deterred the cases we document. The Maduro and Iran strike trades appeared to involved non-public information possessed by military and national security personnel who are already covered by separate statutes—or, in the case of the Iranian operation, possibly foreign nationals. And the Taylor Swift case involved personal social knowledge entirely outside government information channels. 7004 would have any measurable effect on insider trading in prediction markets. Finally, we consider a liability theory directed at informed traders themselves on decentralized platforms that resist operator-level regulation. We argue for extending the misappropriation doctrine’s breach-of-duty framework, through CFTC rulemaking, to cover the non-securities duties of confidentiality that government employees, military personnel, and corporate insiders owe to their respective principals.

The same features that make prediction markets epistemically powerful—their incentive to reward private information with financial returns—also make them uniquely attractive venues for the exploitation of material non-public information. When the information in question concerns classified military operations, the profits come not merely from superior analysis but from theft of government secrets. When it concerns corporate product launches, the profits represent misappropriated trade secrets. When it concerns personal social knowledge, the profits represent monetization of relationships and confidences.

But a rising dollar may impede the gains, and a broader wish to maintain higher cash levels. 2022 was a year of higher inflation and rising rates, and bramridge it proved to be a difficult one for gold prices. That year, gold bottomed with equities in October, having dropped around 20% from March until October. Flows to the US dollar will likely continue for the time being, propping up the currency, while the future path depends on how the new Fed chairman shapes policy along with the rest of the committee in a world of rising inflation. Equity markets have fallen from the highs seen in February, but have yet to really enter a full correction, or a much broader bear market.

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The dollar’s rise and a need to realise gains led to a major selloff in gold during March, reversing the gains of January and February. The price has now found a low around $4400, and may recover from here as investors seek diversification away from equities. If a security is subject to a Trading Pause, the Pause Threshold Price field will contain the reference threshold price that deviates 10% from a print on the Consolidated Tape that is last sale eligible as compared to every print in that security on a rolling five-minute basis.