US President Donald Trump has disclosed 4,139 stock trades during the first quarter of 2026, marking a historic departure from decades of blind-trust precedent. According to the latest disclosures, this volume averages roughly 58 trades for every U.S. trading day in the quarter and breaks with a near-unbroken stretch of blind-trust arrangements stretching back to Lyndon B. Johnson. Most US presidents since Johnson placed personal holdings into qualified blind trusts to limit conflicts, with notable exceptions including Jimmy Carter who liquidated his peanut farm and Barack Obama who held Treasury notes and index funds. The current filing covers 113 pages and represents the most extensive trading activity by a sitting president in recent history, with Trump certified the Form 278-T on May 8 and the Office of Government Ethics receiving it on May 12.
The disclosures reveal substantial investments and sales across major US companies, with Trump purchasing stakes worth over $5 million each in big tech companies including Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Boeing Co., and Costco Wholesale Corp.. The filings report individual purchases of Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Broadcom (AVGO), Amazon (AMZN), and Apple (AAPL) all falling in the $1 million to $5 million range. Hundreds of separate sales range from $15,000 up to $25 million per line item, with the cumulative total potentially reaching around $750 million. The portfolio aligns strategically with administration actions, including semiconductor positions in Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD that coincide with White House push on domestic chip capacity, and financial sector investments in JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Visa that overlap with deregulatory policies. The filing uses dollar ranges rather than exact figures, with the aggregate notional value falling between roughly $220 million and $730 million, with a central estimate near $475 million.
The disclosures have raised significant ethics questions over policy-aligned holdings, with critics flagging overlaps as conflict risks. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has publicly backed a ban on congressional stock trading, and lawmakers in both parties have echoed that position. The most contested example involves Dell Technologies (DELL), where filings record multiple seven-figure purchases beginning February 10, the same day Trump publicly praised the company at a White House event. The stock rose roughly 12% the same day, while the Dell family separately pledged $6.25 billion to the Trump Accounts program in December 2025. The White House has defended the filings as full STOCK Act compliance, though whether the pattern triggers a formal review will depend on House and Senate ethics committees and the Office of Government Ethics. The filing reveals that purchases outnumbered sales by roughly two to one, with the most actively traded names being dominated by AI infrastructure, cloud, and consumer technology companies.
The disclosures reveal several strategic purchases made around significant corporate announcements. Trump purchased Nvidia stock worth between $1 million to $5 million on February 10, coinciding with Nvidia's announcement of a 73% revenue growth in its fourth quarter performance. Similarly, he made investments of up to $5 million each in Apple on March 2 and Microsoft on March 19, both days when major product announcements were made. The buys of Coinbase (COIN), Robinhood (HOOD), and SoFi (SOFI) align with an active pro-crypto policy window that has seen executive orders, a federal Bitcoin reserve, and a Trump Accounts retirement program, with Robinhood serving as the program's initial trustee. The filing shows 19 transactions across nine different ETFs that provide exposure outside the United States, with the entire international book concentrated in roughly seven trading days between January 29 and March 10.
The most telling pattern in the filing is the cadence of trading activity, which divides cleanly into two distinct periods: the period before Operation 'Epic Fury' and the period of the Iran war. January recorded 380 transactions split 242 purchases against 138 sales, while February recorded 479 transactions with 237 purchases against 242 sales. March alone recorded 1,319 transactions split 983 purchases against 336 sales, representing more activity than January and February combined. The week starting March 23 captured the most aggressive buying session, with Monday March 23 seeing 188 purchases against just 11 sales - the most active day on the quarter. The filing records 19 foreign-linked ETF transactions with the largest single position being the iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG), which appears three times on the buy side with a combined estimated value of $2 million to $7 million. Notably, there are no corresponding sales of any foreign-linked ETF anywhere in the 113-page filing, with the entire international book moving in one direction - buying.
