The trades came in bursts, sometimes dozens or even hundreds in a day, all for the benefit of the Trump family.
In the first three months of the year, President Trump’s brokerage accounts placed more than 3,600 trades, as they bought and sold a wide variety of stocks and bonds, according to a disclosure form released last month.
On the surface, it appeared to be an unusual trading spree. In prior months, Mr. Trump typically reported a couple hundred trades or fewer. One disclosure last year showed only 25, The New York Times found.
Some of the trades early this year also appeared to be well timed, notably a purchase of Dell shares that came months before the company secured a lucrative government contract.
Mr. Trump’s critics contend that he is profiting from his presidency, and worry that he could be trading on inside information, while his supporters argue that any well-timed trades are coincidental. In a recent statement, Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, said that he and his family had no ability to direct the trading, all of which is controlled by outside brokerage firms.
To understand the nature of the trading, The Times analyzed the president’s recent disclosure form, as well as other documents from his financial institutions, some of which were previously unreported. The Times also spoke to independent market experts and people with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s finances.
The people with knowledge of his finances said that the trading surge early this year did not reflect a change in strategy, but rather stemmed from a favorable court ruling that freed up hundreds of millions of dollars for the president to invest.
Interviews and documents reviewed by The Times also support the Trump Organization’s contention that the president cannot place trades.
Mr. Trump’s brokerage firms have authority over the accounts, the documents show, and are prohibited from accepting trade requests from him and his family. The firms also cannot provide the family notice of trades ahead of time, and The Times found no indication that the president had directed the firms to trade for him, or that he had used inside information to trade.
These same rules apply to any client who uses this kind of investment product, which is held by many wealthy clients at the financial houses Mr. Trump uses.
Whether Mr. Trump could pump up a stock that he knows he owns is a different matter.
Unlike every other president since the 1970s who has owned individual stocks and businesses, Mr. Trump declined to put his assets into a blind trust. The decision to forgo that traditional ethical guardrail potentially allows him to know what stocks he owns, and to influence their performance with policy announcements or contracts even if he cannot direct how or when they are traded. The Trump Organization says he has not done so.
Nonetheless, the possibility means that the perception of the conflict will likely linger and continue to fuel concerns that the president is trying to manipulate his portfolio.
“The whole point of having a blind trust is so your virtue can never be called into question,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. He added, however, that “President Trump does not feel obliged to follow the same norms and rules as everyone else.”
Here is what we know about the recent trading.
How does the president invest his money?
In addition to owning hotels and other properties, the president has hundreds of millions of dollars in liquid assets that he keeps in accounts at several large financial institutions, including Charles Schwab and JPMorgan Chase. The accounts are held by the president’s trust, and his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., serves as the trustee.
At the end of 2024, the trust had invested at least $236 million in the financial markets. But after a recent windfall from his cryptocurrency ventures, the value of the portfolio is likely much higher. In the coming weeks, the president is expected to disclose more recent figures.
Are presidents allowed to know what they are trading?
Yes. Blind trusts, while customary, are not required for presidents. Mr. Trump is allowed to know what assets are in his financial portfolio and he actually signs the disclosure forms listing all the trades.
Once a year, he meets with one of his main financial advisers for an update on his accounts, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who said the discussions involve a brief overview of the overall performance of the accounts. But a person familiar with these discussions said that Mr. Trump does not receive a briefing on the specific stocks he owns.
What happened early this year?
Between January and March, the president’s accounts placed more than 3,600 trades, according to the recent disclosure form. Roughly two-thirds of those were purchases totaling more than $100 million, and the rest were sales. (The document includes ranges in some cases, so the exact sizes of the trades are not publicly known.)
The activity was not limited to a few select companies. Mr. Trump’s accounts bought and sold more than 1,000 different stocks, bonds and funds.
Why so many trades?
Mr. Trump’s account was unusually active at the start of the year, but market experts and people with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s finances said that several factors accounted for the surge.
First, it was a volatile quarter in the stock market, which likely drove some of the trading. And one of the busiest days for Mr. Trump’s portfolio was March 23, the day that the S&P 500 had its quarterly rebalancing, when companies are added and removed from the index, a process that can prompt heavy trading for any wealthy person.
Much of the trading also stemmed from new money entering Mr. Trump’s accounts, thanks to a favorable court ruling.
In 2024, a judge imposed a nearly $500 million judgment against Mr. Trump arising from a civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, a decision that forced Mr. Trump to set aside cash as collateral for a $175 million appellate bond. But last August, an appellate court struck down the judgment, freeing up the money earmarked for the bond.
One of the people with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s finances said that the court victory allowed Mr. Trump to reinvest much of that money into the markets, prompting a flurry of trades.
Which of those trades drew scrutiny?
A handful of trades in Mr. Trump’s accounts early this year stood out, including in the chip manufacturer Nvidia and the computer company Dell Technologies.
In February, nine days after Mr. Trump’s account executed a purchase of more than $1 million in Dell stock, the president praised the company and its founder, Michael Dell, at an event in Georgia.
“Go out and buy a Dell computer,” Mr. Trump said.
Then, last month, the Pentagon announced a $9.7 billion contract with Dell.
There is no indication that the contract was related to the president’s stake in the company, and Mr. Trump was friendly with Mr. Dell before the trade. Last December, Mr. Dell and his wife pledged to donate $6.25 billion to help kick off special investment savings accounts with tax benefits for American children, which were called Trump Accounts.
Some of the president’s critics have seized on the timing of the trades.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, has called for a ban on presidential stock trading, and recently urged Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to support an investigation into Mr. Trump’s trades.
Mr. Bessent played down the trading, arguing that Mr. Trump was “not sitting in the Oval Office engaging in a high-frequency trading strategy. Clearly, he had an outside manager who was doing that.”
Mr. Trump’s company has also noted that the Dell trade represented a small fraction of his overall investment portfolio.
In a statement to The Times, Ms. Warren said that “when the president buys Dell stock and then turns around and tells people to buy a Dell computer, it sure looks like Donald Trump is abusing the power of the presidency to boost his stock portfolio.”
Is the president trading on inside information?
The president’s company said that Mr. Trump cannot trade on inside information because his brokerage firms do not allow him to place or request trades.
“Neither President Trump, his family, nor the Trump Organization has any role in selecting, directing, approving, influencing or soliciting specific investments,” the Trump Organization said in a statement. “They receive no advance notice of trades, cannot alter or override the managers’ strategies or models, and provide no input regarding investment decisions or portfolio operations.”
The Times has not analyzed every trade in Mr. Trump’s accounts, but interviews and documents show that the president’s brokerage firms have instituted procedures to prevent insider trading and limit conflicts of interest.
For starters, the firms maintain so-called discretionary accounts for Mr. Trump, meaning they have authority over all of the trading. Mr. Trump and his family, the documents show, have no authority to place or request a trade.
A person involved in Mr. Trump’s portfolio at one of the brokerage firms said the family had never called to request a trade. But if a family member did try to do so, the firm would automatically block the trade, the person said.
The family is still responsible for determining its risk tolerance, but the brokerage firms execute the trading strategy.
Most of the firms use so-called direct indexing, a common strategy for wealthy clients. In short, rather than buying a stock index fund for the clients, the firms purchase the underlying stocks in an index like the S&P 500 or Schwab 1000. The trading is conducted automatically using models, a system that prevents any one client, including the president, from altering the strategy, according to independent market experts.
The experts added, however, that the president’s trust could decide to change that structure and regain authority over the accounts.
For now, the Trump Organization says that nothing will change. In the statement, the company said that the family chose this investment strategy to mitigate ethical concerns.
“This structure was intentionally designed to maintain a clear separation between President Trump and the independent third party investment managers overseeing the accounts, and avoid even the appearance of any conflict of interest,” the company said.
Is the president promoting stocks he owns?
Mr. Trump routinely namedrops companies in his social media posts and in public appearances. He owns shares in many of them.
But it would be difficult to ascertain whether these references were designed to affect a share price, or if they were simply musings.
Regardless, even if Mr. Trump took official action to support any of those companies, federal law does not prohibit it. The president is exempt from a conflict-of-interest law that prohibits federal employees from taking actions in their official roles that benefit their own financial interests.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said in a recent statement that Mr. Trump “only acts in the best interests of the American public,” and that “there are no conflicts of interest.”
Jeremy Singer-Vine and Joe Rennison contributed reporting.
