Trump accounts made 1,156 trades in July, 40 times Bessent's 2025 total

September 25, 2026 at 12:05 PM2 min

This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.

President Donald Trump's financial accounts made 1,156 transactions in July, including 440 purchases and 716 sales, according to a filing with the Office of Government Ethics. The trades totaled between $79 million and $270 million. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed 29 transactions for all of 2025.

Key Facts

Trump's accounts made 1,156 transactions in July, including 440 purchases and 716 sales.
The total value of Trump's July trades ranged from $79 million to $270 million.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed 29 transactions for all of 2025, all of them sales.
Trump's accounts recorded more than 21,000 transactions during his first year back in office.
Federal conflict of interest law 18 U.S. Code 208 does not apply to the president or vice president.

Trump's July Trading Volume

President Donald Trump's financial accounts made 1,156 transactions in July, including 440 purchases and 716 sales, according to a report filed with the Office of Government Ethics. The transactions represented at least $79 million and at most $270 million in trades, according to a Fortune analysis of the report. The exact dollar amount associated with each trade was not disclosed. A White House spokesperson previously told Fortune that the president's assets are held in a trust managed by his children. The large number of transactions is the result of third-party computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000, the spokesperson said.

Bessent's 2025 Disclosures

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent disclosed just 29 transactions for all of 2025, according to an Office of Government Ethics report. All of Bessent's transactions were sales, the report showed. Several of the transactions involved his interests in entities related to Key Square, the hedge fund he founded in 2015 and left to join the administration. Others were sales of individual stock in companies like Verizon and Archer Daniels Midland. A JPMorgan Chase stake owned by Bessent's husband, John Freeman, was also inadvertently reported as a deposit account previously and was adjusted, according to the report.

Conflict of Interest Rules

Federal conflict of interest law 18 U.S. Code 208 legally prevents most federal officials from acts affecting a personal financial interest, but this doesn't apply to the president and vice president. Trump's volume of trading has ramped up during his second term, with a disclosure filed with the OGE showing the president's accounts recorded more than 21,000 transactions during his first year back in office. It's unusual for a president to maintain ownership of an actively traded portfolio of individual securities while in office. Since Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, all modern presidents have either adopted a blind trust or limited their investments to nonconflicting assets like diversified mutual funds, said Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, in 2017 remarks.