Hegseth's broker at Morgan Stanley contacted BlackRock in February about making a multimillion-dollar investment in the asset manager's Defense Industrials Active ETF, the people said, shortly before the US launched military action against Tehran.

The inquiry on behalf of the high-profile potential client was flagged internally at BlackRock, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Note however that if this is true, he would still have lost some money (-12.7% as shown on the chart below).

Source: FT, Bloomberg, RBC