President Donald Trump placed more than 3,600 stock trades during the first three months of 2026, according to a disclosure filing submitted to a federal ethics agency, an average exceeding 100 buy and sell orders per week. The portfolio included as much as $6 million in Nvidia, the chipmaker whose advanced semiconductors Trump approved for sale to China last year, as well as shares of major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman — companies whose revenues have been directly shaped by administration policy on military spending and the ongoing Iran war.
As MSI previously reported, the filing documents personal securities holdings that directly intersect with presidential decisions on trade, technology exports and defense procurement.
The trading volume and the range of companies involved represent a significant departure from the approach of recent presidents. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush each avoided holding individual stocks whose value their official actions could affect, typically placing their assets in blind trusts or diversified index funds.
“If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime,” said Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics adviser under President George W. Bush and a critic of congressional stock trading. “Technically he can do this, but it is a fundamental breach of trust.”
The disclosure covers the quarter ending March 31, 2026. Federal ethics rules require presidents and other senior officials to report personal securities transactions, but the rules do not bar them from trading individual stocks in the way that laws such as the STOCK Act restrict trading by members of Congress.
The Associated Press first reported on the filing Monday. A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.