You don't even have to turn on the financial news. You can tell whether oil prices will be up or down in the morning by simply reading the president's midnight social media posts. If he announces confidence in the ceasefire with Iran, oil will be down in the morning. If he posts about Iran glowing in the dark or about the stone age, you don't want to be short petroleum.

Here's a representative example from May 6, posted by The Kobeissi Letter, a capital market commentary:

"At 3:40 AM ET today, nearly 10,000 contracts worth of crude oil shorts were taken without any major news. This is equivalent to ~$920 million in notional value, an unusually large trade for 3:40 AM ET. At 4:50 AM ET, just 70 minutes later, Axios reported that the US is 'close' to a 'memorandum of understanding' to end the Iran War. By 7:00 AM ET, oil prices had fallen over -12 percent with these crude oil shorts gaining approximately +$125 million."

An unusually large trade. Precise timing. And it wasn't a first.

Reuters reported that on March 23, "investors sold $500 million in oil futures just 15 minutes before an announcement by Trump that he would delay attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure, which stunned markets and then triggered a 15 percent drop in the crude price."

The Reuters account includes similarly well-timed trading on April 7:

"Investors placed an approximately $950 million bet on oil prices falling just hours before the U.S. and Iran announced a ceasefire, the latest large wager on the direction of the world's most traded commodity ahead of a major policy ?announcement by President Donald Trump…

Trump stepped back from threatening the destruction of 'a whole civilization' and announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran, knocking crude ?futures down by some 15 percent to below $100 a barrel at the start of Wednesday's official trading session."