Trump's Brokerage Traded Around His Own Market-Moving Decisions

The periodic transaction report the Office of Government Ethics released on May 14 documents 3,642 individual trades made through President Donald Trump's brokerage account in the first three months of 2026. The filing shows between $220 million and $750 million in volume at a pace of roughly 60 trades per day. The pattern that emerges is one of trades timed around Trump's own policy announcements, market-moving social media posts, and foreign policy decisions.

The simple read: a sitting president can own stocks. The better market read: the timing of these trades around policy decisions creates a conflict that markets have not priced. Richard Painter, a securities law professor at the University of Minnesota and former chief White House ethics counsel under George W. Bush, told Fortune: "It's an unusual position for a president to be in."

The Feb. 10 Trade: Selling Hyperscalers, Buying the SaaSpocalypse

On Feb. 10, the account made its largest single-day move of the quarter. It sold between $5 million and $25 million each of Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) – the AI hyperscalers that had been cast as central to American dominance in the technology. The same day, an AI founder named Matt Shumer published a 5,000-word essay arguing that AI could hollow out software engineering, a fear that would later engulf Wall Street.

The account bought into the "SaaSpocalypse" that Shumer's essay predicted. It purchased ServiceNow, Adobe, Workday, and PTC – software names that suffered sharp drawdowns in the days after the essay went viral – most in the $1 million-to-$5 million band. It also invested in the picks and shovels of AI: Nvidia (NVDA), Broadcom, Dell, CDW, Jabil, and Synopsys.

The timing is notable because three weeks later, Trump stood with executives from those hyperscalers at the White House and told reporters the companies "need some PR help" as communities pushed back against the data center boom. The morning before the account sold them, his administration had leaked a planned carveout exempting Google, Amazon, and Microsoft from tariffs on chips – a policy move that would protect the hyperscalers from one of the biggest cost risks looming over the AI boom.

What the Filing Shows

The filing has only four trades in the $5 million-to-$25 million band – its top tier of value. Every single one is a sale:

• Jan. 12: Sold the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (the largest single sale in the filing)
• Feb. 10: Sold Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta

The Vanguard sale occurred on the day Trump announced 25% tariffs on countries buying Iranian oil, marking a divestment from U.S. equities.

Iran War Trading: From Safe Havens to Energy Stocks on De-escalation

During the Iran war, the account traded into safe-haven stocks even as Trump said the war would end soon. On March 4, the day Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the account bought the iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF. The next day, it bought iShares Gold Trust in the $500,000-to-$1 million band, alongside an energy ETF and a Canadian equity ETF.

On March 10 – three days after Trump announced Iran had "apologized and surrendered" – the account bought a sweep of international and emerging-markets exposure: Europe, Japan, Canada, Eurozone-hedged, international developed markets, and the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF in the $500,000-to-$1 million band.

A week later, on March 17, the day Trump told Ireland's Taoiseach Iran was "essentially largely over in two or three days," the account bought a $1 million-to-$5 million position in the Schwab Government Money Fund – cash.

On Monday, March 23, Trump gave markets their first clear signal of de-escalation. In an all-caps Truth Social post, he announced the U.S. and Iran had been having "very good and productive conversations" and extended the deadline for a deal by five days. Brent crude plunged nearly 11%. Energy stocks sold off with oil. The brokerage account in Trump's name spent the day buying them: Phillips 66, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, along with defense and aerospace names like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics – the companies that stood to profit if the war dragged on.

Painter said this is exactly the kind of trading a president shouldn't do, because the president has both confidential information about overseas developments and the power to move commodities markets through his own decisions. "He has no control over the accounts? That's beside the point," Painter said. "He certainly has the control over the decision about whether we went to war or not."

The Dell and Intel Pattern: Building Stakes Before Public Endorsements

The account built stakes in companies before Trump named them publicly. It bought Dell on Feb. 10 in the $1 million-to-$5 million band, then added smaller positions throughout March. It never sold a share. On May 8, Trump told a White House audience to "go out and buy a Dell." The stock hit an all-time high that week, up nearly 24%.

Intel followed the same pattern. The account accumulated shares through March. On April 30, Trump posted on Truth Social that "Intel stock continues to rise," and the shares gained 3% after hours. The administration owns 10% of the company.

The account also paid attention to smaller stories. On Jan. 28, during the national egg shortage, it bought Cal-Maine Foods, the country's largest egg producer; it sold two months later in a band two to five times larger. On Feb. 2, it bought between $1 million and $5 million of Kura Sushi USA, a conveyor-belt sushi chain whose entire stock turns over roughly $14 million in a typical day. It also traded Coinbase, Robinhood, Strategy Inc, and a rotation of gambling and sports-betting names across the quarter.

The Disclosure Gap: What the Filing Doesn't Show

Painter cautioned that even the 113-page filing is partial. The 278-T captures only trades in the president's personal account – not those of the LLCs and corporations Trump controls, of which there are dozens. The disclosure rules don't pierce the corporate level. "You're looking at a very incomplete disclosure picture," he said.

The filing doesn't always specify whether a given transaction is a stock, bond, or ETF. It also only shows trades being actively bought and sold, not stable holdings. The scale of what Trump's account actually holds is impossible to know.

Key Data Points from the Filing

What This Means for Market Confidence and Policy Risk

The trading pattern creates a new category of risk for market participants. Every policy announcement, tariff decision, or foreign policy move now carries the potential that the president's personal portfolio has positioned for it. Even if the trades are automated and managed by third parties – as the Trump Organization claims – the perception of conflict is itself a market factor.

Risk to watch: Presidential trading introduces a conflict-of-interest premium into policy-sensitive sectors. The next tariff announcement or geopolitical escalation may be met with skepticism about whether the information was traded on beforehand.

What would reduce the risk: A clear, independently verified blind trust arrangement with no communication between the president and the trustee, or a full liquidation of individual securities into index funds and Treasuries. What would make it worse: Additional filings showing trades ahead of major policy shifts, or evidence that the account is not truly blind.

For traders, the immediate takeaway is that the filing adds a layer of uncertainty to any policy-driven trade. The MSFT stock page and NVDA stock page show those stocks were directly involved in the Feb. 10 trade. The broader stock market analysis will need to account for this new variable in risk assessment.

The next periodic transaction report, due in August, will show whether the pattern continued into the second quarter. Until then, the market is left with a 113-page document that raises more questions than it answers about the line between presidential authority and personal portfolio management.