Washington — President Donald Trump’s investment accounts have continued buying and selling stock in oil and natural gas companies throughout the U.S. war with Iran, a conflict that has driven energy prices higher and sent his personal holdings in the sector climbing by tens of millions of dollars, according to financial disclosure filings reviewed through the second quarter of 2026.
The filings, submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, show that as the war continued, paused for a ceasefire, and then resumed, Trump’s accounts executed hundreds of thousands of dollars in oil and gas trades. In the first three months of the year alone, his accounts carried out roughly 3,600 stock and securities transactions worth between $212 million and $695 million, spanning all 11 market sectors.
Among the most scrutinized transactions was a sale on April 7 of between $500,000 and $1 million in ExxonMobil stock, disclosed in a filing Trump submitted in late June. Exxon shares closed that day at $163.91 — before Trump announced a ceasefire in the Iran war that evening. The stock opened down 6.5%, at $153.52, the following morning. During the same stretch, Trump’s accounts also bought and sold hundreds of thousands of dollars in Chevron and ConocoPhillips shares, among other energy holdings.
Democrats Estimate Millions in Gains
Democratic staff on the Joint Economic Committee estimated this week that Trump’s oil and gas holdings rose from a range of $13 million to $46 million at the start of 2026 to between $17 million and $61 million by mid-August — a roughly 39% average increase, driven largely by the run-up in energy prices tied to the Venezuela operation in early January and the Iran war that began at the end of February. Because financial disclosure rules only require officials to report transactions in broad dollar ranges, the committee’s estimates could understate the actual scale of the gains.
The committee’s report specifically flagged Valero and Marathon Petroleum, two of Trump’s larger energy holdings, as having more than doubled in value since the start of the year. Committee Democrats also found that Trump purchased as much as $3.6 million in additional oil and gas stocks during the first three months of 2026, including Chevron purchases made in the weeks following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela.
Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee, tied the gains directly to the president’s energy policy agenda. “Trump’s corruption is clear as day: He promised to deliver for Big Oil if they donated to his campaign…this in turn has caused Trump’s own oil and gas stock holdings to skyrocket, all while Americans are left to shoulder the cost through high prices at the pump,” Hassan said.
Trading Volume Has Accelerated Through 2026
The scale of trading activity under Trump’s name has drawn scrutiny well beyond his energy holdings. His June disclosure alone documented more than 1,000 new trades, averaging over 30 transactions a day and totaling between $78 million and $263 million. His full 2025 annual disclosure, a 927-page filing, reported more than 21,000 securities transactions across eight known investment accounts holding at least $858 million in assets. Financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab, UBS and Stephens Inc. have been linked to at least four of those accounts, though a complete list of the managers handling Trump’s portfolio has not been disclosed.
Trump has repeatedly said he has no direct involvement in decisions about when his accounts buy or sell securities. “We have funds that run my money,” Trump said in July. “They invest my money, and I don’t talk to them.”
White House Defends Independent Management
The White House has maintained that Trump’s portfolio is managed without his input. “President Trump’s stock and bond portfolio is independently managed by third-party financial institutions,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said. Ingle added that Trump’s holdings “are maintained in discretionary accounts and invested through computer-based model portfolios that automatically replicate recognized indexes, such as the Schwab 1000,” and said no one in Trump’s family “has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold.”
Some fund managers have offered a similar explanation for the volume and pattern of trades. David Salem, a portfolio manager at Hedgeye Asset Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, described the activity as “classic tax-loss harvesting activity,” a practice in which managers sell securities at a loss to offset gains elsewhere in a portfolio. “The manager and managers, plural, who are doing this for Trump are probably doing it for tens of thousands of other customers,” Salem said. “You can’t do this kind of direct indexing you see in the filing unless you have pretty sophisticated computers, and legal and tax gurus to figure all this out.”
Ethics Watchdogs Push Back
Government ethics groups have rejected the White House’s framing, arguing that Trump bears responsibility for the appearance of a conflict of interest regardless of who executes the individual trades. Donald Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), said the president should not be positioned to benefit financially from a war his administration is prosecuting.
“President Trump’s war of choice in Iran has cost the American people in the form of higher energy and gas prices and higher shipping costs,” Sherman said. “Meanwhile, Trump’s brokers have been trading oil and gas stocks for him, making Trump significant profits on the global instability he’s inciting. It doesn’t matter whether he’s trading the stocks himself—the president has a duty to avoid conflicts of interest between his finances and what’s best for the American people.”
The energy sector is not the only area of Trump’s portfolio that has drawn ethics scrutiny in 2026. In February, Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million in shares of Axon Enterprise; within a week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced plans to purchase $220 million in security equipment, and Axon’s stock climbed 34%. CREW said at the time that Trump had “bought into a company whose business could grow if his own administration expands immigration enforcement.” Separate disclosures also showed Trump holding stock in defense contractors including Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman — companies whose share prices have been buoyed by the Iran war. Former George W. Bush ethics adviser Richard Painter said of those defense holdings, “If he were defense secretary, he would be committing a crime.”
Oil Company Profits Amid Elevated Prices
The Joint Economic Committee’s report estimated that major oil and gas producers recorded roughly $125 billion in profits during the period covered by the analysis, as global oil prices remained elevated through the war. Trump himself has publicly criticized the scale of those industry profits. Asked earlier this month about earnings at ExxonMobil and Chevron — two companies in which his own accounts hold positions — the president said, “They’re making too much money.”
A Break From Past Presidents
Trump’s approach to his personal wealth stands apart from that of his recent predecessors. George W. Bush placed his assets in a blind trust for the duration of his presidency. Barack Obama’s holdings were limited to index funds, mutual funds and Treasury notes. Joe Biden did not own individual stocks. Trump, by contrast, has declined to place his assets in a blind trust, meaning he continues to hold visible, individually identifiable stakes in companies operating in sectors directly shaped by his administration’s policy and military decisions. Forbes estimated his net worth at more than $6 billion as of August 26, making him the wealthiest president in modern American history.
Presidents, members of Congress and other federal officials are not legally barred from trading individual stocks, though lawmakers in both parties have introduced legislation over the years to prohibit the practice. Congressional Democrats have signaled that a Trump stock-trading probe would be a priority if the party retakes control of either chamber in the November midterm elections, and lawmakers have already pressed the administration to disclose the identities of the financial managers overseeing his accounts.
The Office of Government Ethics requires officials to disclose stock purchases and sales exceeding $1,000 within 45 days of the transaction, or within 30 days of learning of it — a reporting window that has left the public record on Trump’s trading activity persistently behind real time. Trump was late in filing several of his 2026 transactions, according to OGE records, meaning the full scope of his energy trading during the most volatile stretches of the Iran war may not be publicly known for weeks or months to come.