NPR.

This is the indicator from planet money. I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Ricky Mulvey. The Iran war has led to the deaths of thousands of people, economic instability around the globe, and billions

of dollars in U.S. military spending. But financial markets march on. And now traders aren't

just watching price charts and economic data. They're staying tuned to President Trump's truth

social posts. They're seeing if the war seems to be heating up or cooling down. If it's heating up, oil prices are up. If it's cooling

down, the S&P 500 has a good day. But some traders may know what's coming before the rest of the

market does. Case in point, in late March, President Trump announced on Truth Social that he would

postpone strikes on Iran. Right before that announcement, at least one trader bet big that oil prices would fall and the S&P 500 would rise.

Doesn't mean it couldn't be completely coincidence.

Could be.

But it does strike me as a bit fishy.

Today on the indicator, we're looking into suspicious trades. How did a financial tool

that farmers use transform into speculative bets on Iran getting a nuclear weapon? And are

regulators paying attention? That's after the break. Traders are paying more attention to politics these days.

Michael Coe is a trader now with Tidal Financial Group.

I actually signed up for a true social account just to try to keep track of it,

but I will admit that I have not been diligent about logging into it.

It's just one of these things that that's not the way we're used to operating.

Two trades that recently caught Michael's attention were in the futures market.

And just a quick explainer here, the futures market lets a seller lock in a price with a buyer

ahead of time. Farmers and ranchers historically used these contracts to, say, guarantee a price for their

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