If Trump is insider trading, he’s terrible at it

At first glance, President Donald Trump’s latest financial disclosures look like a major scandal.

CBS News recently released an interactive dashboard analyzing what it called Trump’s “unprecedented” volume of investment activity during the first quarter of 2026: 1,296 sales and 2,346 purchases worth somewhere between $212 million and $695 million.

Calling it ‘potential insider trading’ is easy. Proving it requires something more than trades that sometimes came before favorable news.

The report emphasized that much of the activity involved individual stocks rather than index funds and noted that some purchases “preceded policy moves” or public statements by Trump that could affect the companies involved.

“The concern is he is in a position to make all kinds of decisions that can affect stock prices,” one government ethics expert told CBS.