President Trump’s money managers made more than 1,100 trades in July
By Allison Morrow, CNN
New York (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s money managers made 1,152 trades on his behalf in July alone, according to his latest financial disclosure Tuesday — an astronomical number relative to his predecessors, and still high by the standard of active traders.
The transactions included many companies such as SpaceX and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon) that do business with the federal government, in industries his administration helps regulate.
The financial transactions amount to roughly 50 trades a day, a heavy volume for a typical investor but consistent with Trump’s portfolio activity in his second term. According to a Bloomberg analysis, Trump or his managers have executed more than 28,000 trades since his second inauguration in January 2025 — more than every member of the House and Senate, combined.
Former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama didn’t trade individual stocks, as their portfolios relied primarily on mutual funds and US Treasuries.
The scale of the trading — which included as much as $25 million in sales of shares of both Microsoft and Amazon — has deepened concerns about the potential for corruption.
The amount of turnover “does seem high,” even by the standards of a tactical investor trying to time the market, said Brett Bernstein, CEO and co-founder of XML Financial Group. But even if the “optics aren’t always great,” the volume alone doesn’t necessarily indicate corruption.
“It depends on someone’s approach to investing… if they have a tactical portfolio manager that’s timing markets with strategies, it doesn’t seem overly crazy,” Bernstein added.
Trump is the first modern president to decline to place his assets in a blind trust — meaning he has the ability to see which stocks his money managers are buying or selling. Trump’s signature appears on his financial disclosure form listing all of his trades, indicating he has seen the document and is aware of at least some of his holdings.
“President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesperson, told CNN.
“All holdings are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000. Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold. All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest,” Ingle added.
Last month, a CNN investigation found that Trump has promoted more than 20 companies on his Truth Social account days after buying stock in those firms – at times announcing government actions that could benefit the companies he just invested in.
“Prior presidents did not engage in the stock market in this way,” Donald Sherman, president of the nonpartisan ethics watchdog CREW, told CNN. “You have numerous examples of Republican and Democratic presidents who took steps to avoid conflicts of interest, and President Trump seems to be taking advantage of every opportunity to profit off of his government service.”
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CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.
