How Trump's Stock Trading Collides With Presidential Power

President Donald Trump has become one of the most active traders in America, executing thousands of stock transactions while overseeing federal decisions that affect many of the same companies - a combination that exposes the limits of the nation's ethics disclosure system.

Trump owns an unknown number of TKO shares. According to a May 12, 2026 financial disclosure filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, he purchased up to $15,000 worth of TKO stock in 2025 and between $15,001 and $50,000 worth on March 25, 2026. Because OGE filings report only broad value ranges, not share counts or execution prices, it is impossible to determine whether Trump profited from hosting the event at the White House.

In short, there is no way to know. The structure of federal disclosure rules makes it impossible to calculate Trump's gains or losses on nearly all of his trades.

After disclosing mostly bond holdings in 2025, Trump's strategy changed. The May OGE filing documented 3,642 individual transactions across 90 days - roughly 58 trades per market day, with 2,345 purchases and 1,296 sales - for a cumulative value between $220 million and $750 million.

The stock in question is Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump beneficially owns 114,750,000 shares through a trust, according to an OGE filing. The value of those shares declined about $3.47 billion between Dec. 17, 2024, when the shares closed at $38.01, and June 12, 2026, when they were worth $7.80.

Below is a list of firms with business before the federal government in which Trump invested - often before the matter had been resolved in favor of the company. Nvidia: Trump made 15 separate Nvidia transactions, including a purchase on Jan. 6 ranging between $500,000 and $1 million, a week before the Commerce Department approved H200 chip exports to China. Intel: Trump made six trades in Intel - in which the U.S. government acquired a 9.9% stake in August 2025 - a holding now worth more than $41 billion. Dell: Trump bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of Dell stock on Feb. 10. The Pentagon later awarded Dell a $9.7 billion contract, and Trump publicly told a crowd to "go out and buy a Dell Computer." Palantir: Trump bought between $247,000 and $630,000 of Palantir across the first quarter, including seven March purchases totaling up to $530,000, as the firm's federal contracts nearly doubled from $541 million in fiscal 2024 to $970.5 million in fiscal 2025. He then endorsed the stock by ticker on Truth Social, praising Palantir's "great war fighting capabilities."

While Trump's shares of DJT have lost $3.4 billion in value, it is not possible to estimate whether the profits or losses from the 3,624 disclosed transactions in public companies have offset that painful loss of value in his media firm.