On Monday, March 23, President Trump announced a 5-day pause in attacks on Iran's energy infrastructure. The decision added 1.7 trillion USD to American stocks, caused the oil price to drop by 15%, and drove Bitcoin above 70,000 USD. The pause is now in effect until April 6.
But Tehran called this “fake news,” and Israel had already violated Trump's pause. Almost all these gains disappeared within a week. So, did Donald Trump really have good talks with Iran, or was it just a trick to boost financial markets and allow big players to sell off?
How Trump's pause aligns with market opening hours
The events began on Saturday, March 22. Trump posted on Truth Social and gave Iran a 48-hour ultimatum to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or else attacks on power plants would follow.
The deadline expired Monday evening when traditional markets were fully open and sensitive.
However, Trump did not proceed. Instead, he wrote at 07:00 ET on Monday that they had “very good and productive talks” with Tehran. He announced a 5-day pause in all attacks on energy infrastructure.
This 5-day window expired on Saturday, March 28. No coincidence.
Stock markets are closed
Futures have low liquidity
Large institutional players are offline.
If the conflict starts again, it will happen in the same liquidity-challenged window as all major market shocks during the Trump era since mid-2025.
The market moved before the news became public. Between 06:49 and 06:50 ET, about 6,200 Brent and WTI futures contracts changed hands worth 580 million USD.
During the same minute, the five previous trading days, the average was about 700 contracts according to Bloomberg, reported the Financial Times.
Meanwhile, someone bought S&P 500 futures for 1.5 billion USD. That order caused the index to rise 0.3%. Fourteen minutes later, Trump's post came. At 07:10 ET, the S&P 500 had increased by about 2 trillion USD in value.
American and British authorities are now reviewing the data. No one has been charged.
“The large increase in trades just before the post is likely to raise questions, and I believe it will trigger an investigation into what was behind it,” wrote CBS News referring to Stephen Piepgrass, partner and expert in futures trading at the law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.
Iran says it never happened
Tehran's response was clear. Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf called it “fake news” to influence the financial and oil markets.
The State Department described it as psychological warfare to push down energy prices and buy time for more attacks. Officials stated that they received messages through intermediaries but emphasized that no direct talks took place.
The denial had an immediate effect. Oil prices rose again. Stocks lost about half of their gains. BTC fell after quickly passing 70,000 USD, leading to 265 million USD in crypto shorts being liquidated in 15 minutes.
Monday was not the first time. BeInCrypto has tracked 11 market-moving Trump statements since November 2024, where each follows what traders now call the TACO pattern – a cycle of action, crash, recovery, and rise.
The tariffs on Liberation Day were announced on April 2, 2025, at 16:30 ET, after the market had closed. Trump wrote “BE COOL! THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!” the next morning, just minutes after the market opened. A 90-day pause followed, resulting in a 9.5% increase in the S&P 500.
On October 10, 2025, a threat of 100% tariffs on China came on a Friday, 20 minutes after the stock market closed. BTC fell 18.4%. Crypto liquidations amounted to 19.1 billion USD in 24 hours.
Six confirmed Friday night attacks between June 2025 and February 2026 followed the same pattern. BeInCrypto noted that this was a recurring 60-hour sequence during those events.
The pause regarding Iran is an evolution. Instead of a Friday shock and a Monday announcement, Monday became the actual occasion. The ultimatum came on Saturday, relief on Monday. The next possible escalation occurred on a Saturday again.
What experts see
Richard Heydarian, a political scientist from Oxford, warned in the BeInCrypto podcast that the conflict could cause economic damage of several trillion, while Trump's tactical maneuvers are impossible to predict.
“Trump is strategically predictable but tactically impossible to foresee. We know what he wants to achieve – American global dominance without questions. But how he gets there in such a complex world, no one knows,” said Richard Heydarian to BeInCrypto.
Mordecai Kurz, an economist from Stanford, also said in the BeInCrypto podcast that this is about a structural problem with concentrated private power that puts ordinary people at risk.
“There are so many concentrations of private power in the USA that it cannot continue... young people only have a chance if technology and politics are used for the benefit of the people,” Kurz explained further.
The 5-day clock expires on Saturday. If the pattern holds, the next major news will come when the market is closed and liquidity is at its weakest.
In 11 documented instances and 16 months, the pattern has not been broken a single time.