President Trump's investment accounts engaged in an unprecedented flurry of stock and securities trading during the first three months of 2026, with total transactions ranging between $212 million and $695 million. According to a disclosure form filed with the Office of Government Ethics on May 8, the accounts executed 2,346 purchases and 1,296 sales between January 6 and March 30.
The document, signed by the president, lists 3,642 individual transactions across 1,026 different firms and funds, making it the highest volume of stock trades ever reported by a sitting president.
The sheer number of trades—averaging roughly 40 per day—has drawn sharp criticism from ethics experts and Democratic lawmakers. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has called for an investigation into potential insider trading, pointing to specific transactions that coincided with favorable government actions.
For instance, on January 6, the president's accounts purchased between $500,001 and $1,000,000 of Nvidia stock. The following week, the administration relaxed export controls on Nvidia's AI chips, allowing sales to China.
Similarly, the accounts bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of Palantir stock in March, and on April 7, President Trump praised the company on Truth Social, including its stock ticker. The accounts also purchased up to $730,000 in Eli Lilly stock during the first quarter, coinciding with favorable government decisions regarding the drugmaker's GLP-1 business.
The disclosure shows a marked increase in trading activity in March, with 1,565 purchases that month compared to roughly 400 in each of the previous two months. On March 23 alone, the accounts made 283 purchases and 17 sales.
Technology firms were the most frequently traded securities, with Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Oracle, and AMD appearing 17 to 22 times each. The total value of purchases was between $126 million and $399 million, while sales ranged from $86 million to $296 million.
Four sales of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and a Vanguard ETF fell in the highest value range of $5,000,001 to $25 million.
Professional investment managers who reviewed the data for CBS News offered differing explanations. David Salem, a portfolio manager at Hedgeye Asset Management, suggested the trades reflect a tax-loss harvesting strategy known as direct indexing, which involves buying and selling individual securities to mimic index funds while offsetting gains with losses.
He noted that the spike in purchases on March 23 coincided with the rebalancing of major index providers like S&P 500 and FTSE, supporting his theory. However, Eric Diton, president of the Wealth Alliance, said he could not explain the volume of trading, stating, "I've never seen a strategy out there that would warrant that amount of trading.
Thousands of trades in a quarter—that's a full-time job and then some."
The Trump Organization issued a statement asserting that neither President Trump, his family, nor the organization plays any role in selecting or approving investments. "They receive no advance notice of trading activity and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio management," the statement read.
"This structure was intentionally designed to maintain a clear separation between President Trump and the independent third-party investment managers."
Despite such assurances, ethics experts remain concerned. Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor specializing in government ethics, noted that President Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust, unlike most modern presidents.
"He must know—or he could know—what his holdings are, and he could know how his actions and statements affect them," Briffault said. "One concern is you just have to trust them.
There's no independent monitor." At a Senate hearing on June 3, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent deflected calls for an investigation, arguing that the president is not personally engaged in high-frequency trading. However, Senator Warren countered that the president could still influence the positions his advisers take, given that he signed the 113-page disclosure form listing every trade.
The situation has prompted calls for greater transparency and potential legislative action, with critics arguing that the current arrangement leaves the door open for corruption. While stock trading by a sitting president is not illegal, and presidents are exempt from certain conflict-of-interest laws, the unprecedented scale of Trump's trading has intensified debates about ethics and accountability in the highest office.