Brent short bet reaches $760M before Hormuz reopening headline

A $760M short-side Brent futures trade landed in a one-minute window before the market-moving Strait of Hormuz headline, turning an oil selloff into a market-integrity story. Reuters, carried by MarketScreener, said investors sold 7,990 Brent crude futures lots between 12:24 and 12:25 GMT on April 17, about 20 minutes before Iran's foreign minister posted that commercial traffic through the Strait would be open during the Lebanon ceasefire period.

The timing matters because crude reacted immediately. Reuters said the announcement pushed crude down as much as 11% in the minutes that followed. Axios reported Brent near $88.90 and WTI near $83.35 after the claims that the waterway was open. Investing.com screens later showed WTI futures down 11.45% and Brent futures down 9.07%, while U.S. equity indexes and Treasuries benefited from the lower inflation-risk impulse.

The trade is not isolated. Reuters said a roughly $950M oil bet was placed hours before the April 7 U.S.-Iran two-week ceasefire announcement, and a $500M oil-futures sale occurred 15 minutes before President Donald Trump said on March 23 that attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure would be delayed. Reuters also reported that the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating a series of oil-futures trades tied to major Iran-war policy shifts.

The broader stake is the pricing of geopolitical information in one of the world's deepest derivatives markets. Hormuz handles a large share of seaborne oil, so a credible opening headline can move Brent, WTI, inflation breakevens, airline shares, refiners, and rate-cut expectations within minutes. Because these trades happened before public headlines, the issue is less a directional oil call than whether war and diplomacy information reached any market participant unevenly.

For market participants, the next checks are CFTC disclosures, exchange surveillance, tanker-flow data, and whether Iranian and U.S. statements align with actual passage through the waterway. A confirmed reopening would pressure energy inflation; a renewed closure would reverse the relief trade quickly.

Not investment advice. Verify all figures with primary sources before acting.