Justin Thomason S5@MrJThomason
Yeah, it's totally possible that the US Treasury—or someone acting on its behalf—could have quietly stepped in behind the scenes during the Iran conflict to keep the stock market from crashing too hard while negotiations dragged on toward a ceasefire.
Think about it: on February 28, 2026, when Trump announced the strikes, everyone expected chaos—stocks tanking at the open, oil shooting straight up. It did. But then slow intraday reversals would take place. What might have been a crash turned into more of a controlled slide, and the Treasury had all the tools to make that happen without ever worrying about turning a profit.
Here's how it could have played out in practice. The government, with its ability to create money essentially without limit through Treasury operations and in possible coordination with the Fed, wouldn't face any of the normal constraints that a hedge fund or trader would. No margin calls, no need to exit positions quickly, nothing. They could just set up shop with direct access to the exchanges or through brokers and start layering in limit buy orders across the major indices, futures like the E-minis for the S&P and Nasdaq, big ETFs, and even key individual stocks.
Picture this: every time the market tried to sell off hard on bad headlines about the strikes or the Strait of Hormuz staying closed, their systems would quietly post a bunch of small-to-medium buy bids at incrementally higher price levels, stacking up just above the current best bid. It creates this visual wall of "demand" in the order book that algorithms and other traders see in real time. Suddenly the book looks like there's serious buying interest building, even if most of those orders are just there for show and get canceled or refreshed as prices move. No intention of actually letting them all fill, but if some do get hit? No big deal—they just end up holding shares in some government-linked account, funded by more debt or liquidity that can be printed as needed.
Over the five or six weeks from late February into early April, this kind of persistent, one-sided support could easily explain why the S&P only dropped around 7-10% instead of the 20-30%+ bloodbath a full-blown war with oil supply shocks might have caused. You'd see those classic patterns: sharp dips at the open on escalation news, followed by strong recoveries as "positive" updates on talks or deadline extensions hit, often timed with Trump's tweets or media reports. The artificial bid depth discourages aggressive shorting and panic selling, while encouraging dip-buyers and momentum algos to jump in. Oil futures could get some similar treatment to cap the spike—pushing it toward that $112-115 range rather than letting it explode to $150 or way higher on fears of a prolonged Hormuz closure.
And because the goal wasn't profit but just buying time and managing perception until a deal could land, they didn't have to worry about reversing trades or timing exits perfectly. The ceasefire announcement on April 7, with that two-week pause and talks in Islamabad, came right as another deadline loomed.
Trump's whole brand is tied to a strong stock market and lower energy prices, so keeping things from spiraling gave diplomacy breathing room without the economy looking like it was collapsing under the weight of the conflict.
Of course, this isn't about total control. Real supply worries and global sentiment still matter, and you can't ignore every headline. But in a thin, news-driven market like that, even moderate layered bids can punch way above their weight, dampening the worst drops and turning potential routs into choppy, recoverable moves. The milder outcome we saw, with stocks grinding lower but bouncing on negotiation hopes and oil topping out without breaking the global economy, lines up pretty neatly with what unlimited funding and relentless perception management could achieve. It would have been a smart, low-drama way to steady the ship until the off-ramp appeared.
