CBS investigation reveals Trump’s record stock trading spree, sparks ethics backlash

President Donald Trump’s investment accounts made 3,642 securities transactions in the first quarter of 2026, a pace that put 2,346 purchases and 1,296 sales on the books between Jan. 6 and March 30. The disclosures, filed on a 113-page Form 278-T with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, showed values ranging from about $220 million to $695 million and immediately sharpened concerns about presidential power colliding with personal market activity.

The filings point to a sprawling portfolio. They included major purchases in Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and Broadcom, part of a trading pattern that touched more than 1,000 firms. But the paperwork did not make clear which account carried out each trade or who specifically made the decisions, leaving the public with a full count of transactions and a partial account of accountability.

That omission has become the core of the ethics backlash. Ethics experts and Democrats in Congress criticized Trump for maintaining an active portfolio while serving as president, saying the scale and timing of the transactions raised obvious conflict-of-interest concerns. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for an investigation into potential insider trading, adding political heat to a dispute that is now moving well beyond disclosure compliance.

One investment professional who reviewed the trades said the pattern likely reflected a strategy by Trump’s money managers to reduce his tax bill. Even so, the explanation did little to answer the larger institutional question: whether a president can keep trading at this level without eroding public trust in the neutrality of the office. In the modern era, presidents have not been expected to run an active stock book from the White House.

The filing regime itself shows the limits of current guardrails. Form 278-T records transactions and values, but it does not identify the person behind each trade or spell out whether a specific account was used. The White House referred questions to the Trump Organization, underscoring how disclosure can expose the volume of activity while still stopping short of the transparency needed to resolve the appearance that market bets and presidential authority are intersecting.