The Nasdaq posted a fresh closing high on Tuesday, settling at 27,244.28 points and marking its second consecutive record finish. Brent crude and WTI crude both declined for a fifth straight session, while the 10-year Treasury yield eased but remained near 4.959%. Macro headwinds have yet to fully recede, yet US tech stocks continue their upward march. The Nasdaq 100 has now outperformed non-AI sectors for four consecutive trading days, a move Goldman Sachs has branded as a classic FOMO—fear of missing out—rally.
Barclays' Emmanuel Cau offers another layer of explanation for the surge: after the June deleveraging phase, tech stock positioning became less crowded, and with falling oil prices and renewed China-US AI discussions, buying interest has returned. Michael Zigmont of Visdom Investment Group puts it more bluntly: Monday felt like everyone jumped back into the pool, and a fresh momentum cycle for tech shares may well be underway.
Amid fresh stock market highs, the latest activity in Trump's accounts has come to light. Documents released by the US Office of Government Ethics in September show that accounts under Trump's name executed 1,156 securities trades in July. Aggregating the disclosed value ranges for buys and sells, total transaction volume falls between $79 million and $270 million. The filing only discloses ranges rather than exact amounts, so this figure does not represent net purchases or profits—it is simply the combined value bracket for those 1,156 trades. Over the course of last year, these accounts executed more than 21,000 trades, a stark contrast to 2017, the first year of Trump's initial term, when only 86 stock transactions were disclosed.
Setting aside the official statement that these assets are managed automatically by independent institutions and quantitative models, the adjustment path of Trump's portfolio objectively reveals remarkably sharp market instincts and industrial foresight, with core holdings shifting along three highly distinct lines of logic.
The first thread is a precise high-low rotation within the technology sector. On July 20, a pivotal date, the account executed its largest reduction of the month, selling positions in Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle, with individual trade amounts reaching up to $25 million. Yet the account did not exit tech altogether—instead, it pivoted to buy shares in Nvidia, Marvell Technology, and Salesforce. In hindsight, several of these tech purchases caught subsequent upside. Using closing prices on the day of the trades as a benchmark, from July 20 to September 22, Marvell Technology climbed from $193 to $262.36, a gain of 39%; Salesforce rose from $167.56 to $233.28, up roughly 37%; and Nvidia advanced from $205.64 to $228.87, an increase of about 13%. Reviewing this maneuver, it effectively represented a shift of firepower from high-flying software application names toward AI computing power and hardware infrastructure. Three days after selling Microsoft and Amazon, the account made symbolic repurchases in tiny size, demonstrating highly flexible management tactics.
The second thread involves coincidental policy-aligned trading. On that same July 20, the portfolio fully exited its position in defense giant Northrop Grumman. Strikingly, that date coincided with the signing of a US executive order tightening supply chain requirements for defense contractors. It is also worth noting that back in February, the account built a position in Axon Enterprises, the Taser manufacturer, which closely aligns with the operational expansion of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—a bet that has paid off as domestic security policy strengthens.
The third thread is a defensive-counteroffensive stance in fixed income and passive assets. While aggressively rebalancing tech and defense holdings, the Trump account also built substantial defenses in passive instruments and bonds. On the buying side, it established positions in short-duration bond ETFs, dividend growth ETFs, and a communication services index ETF, along with multiple municipal bonds including Miami-Dade County aviation revenue debt. On the selling side, it cleared out portions of US Treasury ETFs and international Treasury ETFs. This barbell strategy—seeking excess returns on the tech side while locking in high-yield cash flow on the fixed income side—has significantly thickened the portfolio's safety cushion.
From a full-year perspective, Trump's accounts, with over 21,000 cumulative trades, have long since crossed the boundaries of traditional personal wealth management, functioning instead as a highly institutionalized, macro-sensitive operating model. The White House explains that these assets are held in trust, with specific investments managed by independent financial institutions and trades largely executed automatically by computer models, and that Trump and his family do not participate in individual investment decisions. Yet even so, Trump's trading activity has ignited widespread market discussion.
What this phenomenon truly reflects is another, more visible market shift: the US market is becoming increasingly trade-driven. Over the past few years, the biggest change in US equities has been the tightening linkage between policy, technology, and capital markets. Whether it is AI, tariffs, fiscal stimulus, the CHIPS Act, or tech regulation, nearly every policy shift quickly ripples through market sentiment. Now, the trading records of the US President's accounts are drawing intense market scrutiny and have become a major topic of conversation. Increasingly, Wall Street traders joke that to study US stocks nowadays, you not only need to dig through earnings reports—you also need to keep an eye on the White House.