00:00I'm drawn to a quote in your piece by Matthew Tuttle. I've talked to him before. He's kind of an
00:03ETF guy.
00:04And he says to you, this is an insane amount of trades.
00:08As you leafed through those 100 pages of filings, what stood out to you immediately about what was there in?
00:14And this is a story I worked on with Bill Ellison in our Washington, D.C. Bureau, as well as
00:18other reporters in D.C.
00:20And so when you're looking at this amount of trades, over 3,700, typically you wouldn't see that for someone's
00:26personal account,
00:27even though it is, of course, President Donald Trump.
00:30Leader of the free world.
00:30Exactly.
00:31The other part that flagged me was that that's like over 40 per day.
00:34And also, even if you include just trading days, it would be even higher than that, probably in the 50s,
00:3960s.
00:40And so when you're talking to people who are running RIAs, and I want to be clear here because you
00:43don't know exactly behind this,
00:45even if it is an RIA that was making those transactions because the Trump organization said that they have an
00:51independent third party that's managing this
00:53and that it is an automated process.
00:54But when you're speaking with people who are managing money, especially decades on Wall Street,
00:58for even high net worth individuals, you normally don't see that frequency and that type of volume of transaction.
01:04Even just in a quarter alone, typically they have things set in place to where you wouldn't have to make
01:09that many transactions
01:09because your portfolio is supposed to be more bulletproof, despite what happens if there are gyrations in financial markets.
01:15Before we dig into this more, read a statement here from the White House.
01:18They dismissed questions about potential conflicts.
01:21David Engel is saying that Trump only acts in the best interest of the American public.
01:24He added there are no conflicts of interest.
01:26We have a spokesperson for the Trump organization saying the president's holdings are independently managed,
01:29as you mentioned, by a third party financial institution of control over all of these investment decisions
01:34with trades executed through automated processes.
01:38That aside, what kind of trades did we see here?
01:41We mentioned those tech companies at the top.
01:42What stood out to you in terms of what was actually traded?
01:44Well, these are typically companies that the Trump administration is well known to have business dealings with,
01:49especially on the back of his visit in Beijing, especially with NVIDIA, is obviously listed in here,
01:55as well as Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, as well as you see other things with Costco and Dollar Tree.
02:00But what's interesting about this, and you go through the filings,
02:03it's hard to distinguish whether specifically for some of these trades,
02:06whether it was specifically toward a stock, whether it's municipal bonds,
02:09because we've seen other disclosures from this past year where, say, in the fourth quarter of last year,
02:14it was around 380 different trades.
02:16So you went from that at the end of last year, many fewer, but still elevated, right?
02:20If you think compared to what people typically would do in high net worth individuals for those types of movements
02:25there.
02:26So it's hard to distinguish specifically if it was unloading specific stocks, whether it was NVIDIA or Meta.
02:33But even if when I'm speaking with people managing money, some of it doesn't quite make sense
02:37because some of those stocks and how they've performed since the end of March,
02:40say Amazon on a stellar run, especially in April.
02:43I mean, we've seen it up double digits at this point, but then Meta, a bit more mixed.
02:48So say if you are talking to people managing money, why not just buy and hold something?
02:52And so maybe that raises a lot of their questions because they're wondering, well, is it more like an algo?
02:57Is it multiple money managers and financial advisors?
03:01We don't necessarily know that just now.
03:03Okay, I'm going to step back and ask a series of stupid questions.
03:05Why don't we know who or what is exactly making these trades?
03:09Is this legal?
03:10Is it precedented?
03:12And there's information that doesn't show on disclosures.
03:15What is that?
03:15Typically, when you see prior presidents, it's normally a blind trust and an independent financial advisor.
03:21Right.
03:21I think Obama did treasury bills and a diversified mutual fund, and Biden apparently didn't trade stocks.
03:27And Bill Clinton also had a blind advisor as well as President Herbert Walker Bush.
03:32So what's interesting here, there was a Stock Act, I believe it was back in 2012, and it would be
03:37triggered particularly by a certain amount.
03:39And President Donald Trump is the first one to do that.
03:42So he started disclosing that.
03:43We started seeing that beginning in last August.
03:45So most of it's been...
03:46You have to disclose it.
03:48As far as if it triggers it by a certain amount.
03:50So he's the first one to do that.
03:51And most of it's been more toward municipal bonds.
03:54I mean, we saw that toward the end of last year.
03:56This is a little bit more questioned because we're wondering, well, is it still municipal bonds that they're doing?
04:01And you can't necessarily, when you're going through all of this, see specifically whether this is a derivative, whether this
04:06is a stock, whether this is a bond.
04:08So there are those questions about just the volume of those trades.
04:12What exactly is going on there?
04:13And if it is automated process, like the Trump organization was saying, but people still are wondering because you don't
04:18normally see that in high net worth individual accounts.
04:20And you can't see the exact timing, right?
04:23Well, there actually is on February 10th, there was a number of transactions with some of these big tech names,
04:28NVIDIA included.
04:29And then about a week later, obviously, there was different deals and things being made with NVIDIA.
04:34So that was something that raised some eyebrows among people on Wall Street.
04:37But again, we still need more information because it doesn't necessarily dictate and lay out all of that in these
04:43regulatory filings.
04:44I'm going to make an observation, a long-winded one, and then you can comment on it if you'd like.
04:48Get comfortable. Here we go.
04:49You have a president now who is meeting with these executives in a way that past presidents haven't, talking about
04:55these companies.
04:56In some cases, getting the U.S. government involved in private companies in a way that we haven't seen either.
05:00I think of Intel in particular.
05:02Were I his independent investor operating in some capacity away from the president?
05:08He may not be directing me to make trades.
05:10But it is not difficult for me or for you or you to ascertain sort of what companies he's interested
05:16in, where you see movement as a result of that.
05:19But it's just there's a novelty in the projection of what might be of interest to this president.
05:24And obviously, you're able to see the reaction as he talks about these companies in the market in real time.
05:27I mean, if you're a stock guy, you see him getting onto the plane with all these execs.
05:31You just, like, start clicking through, right?
05:32It's not even telegraphed.
05:33It's just there.
05:34It's there, plain and simple, for you to see.
05:35And you see, based on these meetings that he's had with all of these executives, especially on the back of
05:40what was going on with his visit in Beijing.
05:43And again, to make it clear, we don't know that President Donald Trump was actually making these transactions, too.
05:49Or whether his sons were doing that as well, because we know his two older sons oversee a large swath
05:54of his financial portfolio.
05:55But they're making it clear by the Trump organization that this is a third party and supposed to be an
05:59automated process.
06:00But to your point, David, when you're thinking about the meetings that the Trump administration has with these big executives,
06:07that's why some people on Wall Street more so are wondering, well, what do we not know?
06:11When you're the president of the United States, you have so much at your disposal.
06:15They're wondering, well, what information do we not have and what type of trades we're making?
06:18Can I get one last question in on that point?
06:20So you brought up the fact that I think this – and somebody said this to you.
06:23Adam Saron said this to you, wondering sort of how these trades meted out in the end.
06:26Were they positive or negative?
06:27My question to you going forward is, what don't you know that you want to know going forward?
06:31And what are you going to be watching for here as we get to future quarters of releases from the
06:34president?
06:34And when's part two coming in?
06:35Right.
06:35And Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments, I mean, he made that point because he said, I would like to
06:39see the account.
06:40Was this a negative or positive by the end of this?
06:42Because when I brought up Meta's mixed performance, I mean, it doesn't quite make sense because it wasn't at least
06:46like that was a great trade if you did sell all of that.
06:48Also, all those tech stocks had a bad week after that trip.
06:50And then the other thing Adam was pointing out, as well as many others, you can't really say anything illegal
06:54happened based on these filings.
06:55So you have to be very careful with that because, again, it doesn't specifically disclose all of this was stock,
07:00whether all of this was municipal bonds.
07:02You have to be careful when you're looking at these regulatory filings.
07:04We're just seeing there's a massive volume of those trades.
07:07And that's what people are wondering what's going on beneath the hood there.
07:09Jess Metten, great job on this story.
07:12The whole team.
07:12Kudos to you.
07:12Kudos to the whole team.
07:13I have seen this absolutely everywhere.
07:15It ran through Twitter like wildfire and really good old school work.
07:20Congratulations.
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