Unlike previous presidents, including Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who avoided trading stocks while in office, President Donald Trump has been highly active in the market.
According to the documents filed with regulators, the president bought 2,346 securities of companies and sold 1,296 in the first quarter. The filing does not specify whether they were stocks or bonds, and the total value of the reported transactions falls in a range of $220 million to $750 million. The broad range is all that regulators require in such disclosures.
Six Intel transactions
Although the Trump Organization said investment decisions are made by an outside party and that Trump is not involved in the process, some of the transactions raise concerns about conflicts of interest because of their timing or Trump’s proximity to various CEOs.
Alongside Nvidia, the group of the most expensive transactions, estimated at between $1 million and $5 million, also includes Apple, Workday, Uber and Costco. Conversely, this was the first time significant sales were made in the portfolio since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, including the sale of shares worth $5 million to $25 million each in Meta, Amazon and Microsoft.
Paramount Studios, owned by Ellison’s son, and Warner Bros., the company it is acquiring for $110 billion, also appear in the documents. The fate of that acquisition now lies with regulators. Trump also carried out 17 transactions in Netflix shares, Paramount’s main rival in the battle to acquire Warner.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump
(Photo: Evan Vucci / POOL / AFP)
Trump bought hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in defense company Palantir shortly before praising it in a post on Truth Social. “Palantir has proven that it has excellent capabilities and equipment for fighting wars,” he wrote.
‘A disaster for national security’
The disclosure of the investment portfolios drew criticism. Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren focused mainly on the investment in Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company. She accused Trump of lobbying on the company’s behalf during his meeting with China’s president. “The president’s corruption is a disaster for national security,” she said.
The Trump Organization, however, said his investments are managed independently by several financial institutions. “President Trump, his family members and the Trump Organization do not participate in the selection, direction or approval of specific investments,” it said in response. “They do not receive advance notice of trading activity and do not receive information regarding investment decisions or portfolio management.”
The organization added that the transactions and portfolio rebalancing are carried out through “an automated investment process and systems operated by those institutions.” The president’s son, Eric Trump, also stressed on X that the investments are made by an outside fund and that “the claim that specific stocks are sold or purchased at the direction of a family member is fundamentally false.”
