How Trump’s ‘unusual’ brokerage account traded around his own market-moving decisions—selling hyperscalers and buying energy stocks during the war
By Eva Roytburg, Fortune
Everyone who follows tech remembers the “Something Big is Happening in AI” essay–and President Trump’s brokerage may have read it too.
On Feb. 10, an AI founder named Matt Shumer published a 5,000-word essay arguing that most of the world was sleepwalking into a crisis akin to coronavirus, but only tech people knew what was coming. The essay would be viewed nearly 87 million times and crystallized a fear that would engulf Wall Street by the end of the month: AI wasn’t just a boom story. The technology could hollow out entire industries like software engineering, which had been investors’ golden child.
The day Shumer published the essay, Wall Street didn’t panic. Instead, the Dow closed at a record. But for one brokerage account, something big was happening indeed.
Summary
This Fortune article investigates trading activity in a brokerage account held in President Trump’s name, based on a periodic transaction report released by the Office of Government Ethics on May 14, 2026.
Key findings:
- The account made roughly 60 trades per day in Q1 2026, totaling between $220 million and $750 million in volume. The Trump Organization says third-party institutions have “sole authority” over the trades, with no involvement from Trump or his family.
- Several large trades appeared to anticipate or coincide with Trump’s own policy announcements — including selling Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta on the same day his administration leaked a chip tariff carveout that would benefit those very companies.
- During the Iran war, the account moved into safe-haven assets like gold and Treasuries, then bought energy and defense stocks on the exact day Trump publicly signaled de-escalation — when energy stocks sold off sharply.
- The account bought stakes in Dell and Intel before Trump publicly praised both companies, after which their stocks surged.
- Ethics experts quoted in the piece say the arrangement is highly unusual — no modern president has actively traded individual securities while in office, as predecessors used blind trusts, index funds, or full divestment.
- Even if Trump isn’t directing the trades, former White House ethics counsel Richard Painter argues it’s problematic because Trump controls the decisions — like whether to go to war — that move the markets the account trades in.
