President Trump's first quarter trading disclosure landed Thursday with one eye-popping number: 3,642 transactions in three months. That works out to about 58 trades for every US trading day, and many of the names overlap with companies his administration is directly shaping policy for.
The Biggest Buys
In Q1 2026, Trump bought up to $5 million each in Nvidia, Oracle, Microsoft, Boeing and Costco, according to documents filed with the US Office of Government Ethics.
The filings list trades in broad ranges, so the exact dollar value isn't pinpointable.
Trump's Nvidia buys totaled between $1.8 million and $6.6 million, while his Microsoft buys came in at roughly $2.4 million to $8.1 million.
Six trades involved Intel - the same Intel his administration took a 10% stake in last August for nearly $9 billion.
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The China Trip Overlap
Executives from Nvidia and Boeing are part of the US business delegation that traveled with Trump to China this week, and both companies stand to gain from any trade deal that comes out of the trip.
Nvidia in particular needs US government approval for chip sales into China, since its AI chips are restricted exports.
Trump also made 19 transactions naming Netflix during a months-long fight where Netflix and Paramount Skydance battled to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
His Q1 also included a small Warner Bros. stake bought in March worth at least $30,000, and a Paramount Skydance stake worth at least $15,000.
The biggest sales came Feb. 10, when Microsoft, Meta and Amazon holdings sold in amounts between $5 million and $25 million.
The Ethics Backdrop
Trump did not set up a blind trust when he took office, and his sons run his business empire.
The White House says independent managers handle the trades using index-replication programs that copy major benchmarks.
That explanation doesn't fully square with the disclosure, since picking 19 Netflix trades or six Intel trades doesn't look like passive index replication.
Members of Congress have to specify the class of asset they trade, but presidents don't, which means the public can't tell from the filings whether Trump bought common stock, options or bonds for many of these names.
What To Watch
The next disclosure covers Q2 - the same quarter as the China trip.
If trades in Nvidia, Boeing or Intel cluster around major policy announcements, the pressure on Congress to extend trading rules to the presidency will only grow.
For now, the existing rules let the activity continue.
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