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Today on Forbes, here are Donald Trump's 10 best stock trades of 2026. Early on in his second term in office in 2025, Donald Trump eased his way into a Tesla and delivered a delighted review to the car's manufacturer, his biggest billionaire benefactor, Elon Musk. Trump exclaimed, "Everything is computer." This year, the president has brought that philosophy to his investment portfolio. Trump revealed in a series of filings in May that he made nearly 4,000 trades between January and March 2026. That's 44 per day on average and almost three times more than all of 2025 combined.
Total trading volume was between $200 million and $700 million. Unlike his recent Oval Office predecessors, including himself, Trump isn't just buying and selling bonds, broad-based index funds, and money markets. Scores of individual publicly traded companies are getting the presidential seal of approval or disapproval, making the commander-in-chief something like a one-man market signal. Every time one of those companies is added to or subtracted from his portfolio, the questions multiply. Does it do business with the government? Does it need regulatory consideration?
Does it want export approvals, tax favors, federal contracts, antitrust restraint, White House praise, or a seat at the table? Forbes analyzed the president's largest stock trades, roughly 240 that were larger than $250,000. The pattern that emerged is clear. All of his 10 best buys were tech company stocks, boosted by the unregulated AI boom Trump has made a centerpiece of his economic policy.
Everything is, indeed, computer. Trump's best apparent bet was Dell. The president bought between $1 million and $5 million of Dell shares on February 10th. The company's stock, buoyed by AI data center deals, is up 142% since then. That means that if he bought $3 million of shares, the middle of his declared range, they'd be worth about $7.3 million today. And Trump did not stop there. He bought the company's shares three more times, all smaller amounts in March. Then gave the company an unusually convenient bit of presidential pumping on May 8th. After an event with CEO Michael Dell at the White House, Trump declared, quote,
"Go out and buy a Dell." The stock closed 11.5% higher that day and is up 31% since. That's not the only plumbing of the AI economy company Trump has made a killing on. Semiconductor manufacturer AMD is up 136% since the president, who last year allowed the company to export advanced chips to China in exchange for a 15% cut for the US government, bought between $500,000 and $1 million of its shares in February. He invested nine more times after that, but also sold between $15,000 and $50,000 in late March, which may have blunted some of his gains. On January 12th, he bought between $1 million and $5 million of Texas Instruments, or TI, which sells
components for AI chips and promised more than $60 billion in investments last year in a press release that included a statement from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. TI's stock is up more than 60% since the president bought in. Then there's Jabil, which makes AI server hardware and earned plaudits from an official White House account last June for its announcement of its own manufacturing investments in the US. It's up 40% since the president invested in February. Democrats have called the trading what it looks like to them. Greed and self-dealing. After Trump bought Nvidia stock, then brought Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang along with him to China, Massachusetts Senator
Elizabeth Warren posted quote, "The president's corruption is a national security disaster." Trump's allies deny that, of course. Eric Trump replied to Warren on X, quote, "All of our assets are invested in a blind trust by the largest financial institutions in broad market indexes." However, that clearly isn't true. The president owns shares in companies, not just index funds. And the trust that contains his assets is not blind.
Pushback continued nonetheless. Vice President J.D. Vance more plausibly told reporters on May 19th, quote, "The president doesn't sit at the Oval Office on his computer on a Robinhood account buying and selling stocks." That same day, Eric posted a lawyerly passage claiming that his dad's portfolio was contained in, quote, "Fully discretionary accounts managed by independent third-party financial institutions." And that, quote, "Neither President Trump, his family, nor the Trump Organization has any role in selecting, directing, approving, influencing, or soliciting specific investments." In response to a request for comment, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, quote, "There are no conflicts of interest." And called such questions a quote,
"Tired narrative." The Trump Organization sent Forbes a statement identical to Eric's post attributable to a spokesperson. For full coverage and to see the list, check out Kyle Chayka Mullins's piece on forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
