President Donald Trump reported between $220 million and $750 million in financial transactions during the first quarter of 2026, according to disclosure forms filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and first reported by CNBC, Reuters, and NOTUS. More than 3,700 individual transactions were logged. The portfolio skewed heavily toward the same AI and tech companies whose fortunes are shaped by White House policy.

Among the largest purchases: between $1 million and $5 million each in Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Broadcom, ServiceNow, Adobe, Motorola, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Trump also executed four of his biggest sales in the same period, dumping between $5 million and $25 million worth of Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta securities on a single day, February 10.

The timing has drawn scrutiny. NOTUS reported that some of Trump's trades coincided with company-specific news. One week after his February 10 Nvidia purchase of $1 million to $5 million, the company reported record earnings that sent its stock higher. Trump also bought Palantir stock before publicly praising the company at a White House event, where he called it "incredible." Palantir shares rose after the remarks.

The White House said Trump's assets are held in a revocable trust managed by his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., and that "there are no conflicts of interest." Eric Trump told Forbes the trades were "standard portfolio management" and noted the trust predates the presidency. But ethics experts have raised concerns. Unlike members of Congress, the president is exempt from the STOCK Act, which prohibits lawmakers from trading on nonpublic information. There is no federal law barring a sitting president from holding individual stocks in companies directly affected by executive action.

The AI Policy Connection

The concentration in AI stocks is notable because the Trump administration is actively shaping the rules that govern these companies. In Q1 alone, the Commerce Department approved around 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia's H200 chips. Trump personally traveled to Beijing with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Air Force One. The administration is also weighing a federal AI regulatory framework that would preempt state laws, directly benefiting companies like Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle.

The disclosure forms list transaction ranges rather than exact figures, making it impossible to calculate precise gains or losses. But the sheer volume of activity sets a new standard for presidential financial engagement. Previous administrations, including Trump's own first term, saw far fewer individual stock transactions.

What to Watch

Congressional Democrats have already called for investigations. Whether this translates into legislative action remains unclear, given current political dynamics. But the precedent is now set: the president of the United States is actively trading hundreds of millions of dollars in stocks of companies whose regulatory environment he directly controls. In the AI era, where a single executive order can move hundreds of billions in market value overnight, that is not just an ethics question. It is a market structure question.

Sources: CNBC (Kevin Breuninger, May 15), NOTUS (May 15), Bloomberg (May 14), Reuters (May 14), Forbes (Alison Durkee, May 15), U.S. Office of Government Ethics disclosures.