Trump Bought Apple, Nvidia and Other Tech Stocks One Day Before Tariff Reversal
Claire Weston
Trump's 2025 financial disclosure shows he made 327 stock purchases on April 8, loading up on Apple, Nvidia and other Big Tech names; the next day he reversed his tariffs and the S&P 500 surged 9.5% — the timing is now drawing conflict-of-interest scrutiny.
What exactly did he buy on April 8?
Trump executed 327 buy trades that day — more than five times his daily average of roughly 62 trades, making it the 11th-busiest buying day of his year.
The purchases targeted Apple, Alphabet (Google's parent), Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia, each in the $100,000–$250,000 range.
This means → it was not a single opportunistic trade but a concentrated sweep into five "Magnificent Seven" stocks — all of which had just been hammered by a tariff plan he himself announced.
How badly had the market fallen by then?
On April 2 Trump announced sweeping high tariffs — he called it "Liberation Day" — and tech stocks led the sell-off.
By the April 8 close the S&P 500 had broken below 5,000, down more than 12% in four trading days, just short of a bear-market threshold (a 20% drop from the recent high).
In plain terms = he bought at the deepest point of a panic whose direct cause was his own policy announcement.
What reversed the next day?
Minutes after the April 9 open, Trump posted on Truth Social: "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" — then announced a partial rollback of the tariffs.
The S&P 500 jumped roughly 9.5% that day, one of its best single-day gains ever; from April 8 to now the index is up about 50%.
Apple rebounded more than 15% the next day, its best since 1998. Nvidia surged nearly 19% — adding almost a fifth of its market cap in a single session.
How has the White House responded?
Spokesperson Anna Kelly said: "The President and his family have never had and never will have a conflict of interest."
Trump himself said his assets are managed externally — "I don't get involved in my personal [finances]; we have funds managing my money."
This reflects a White House line that the president does not direct trades — but the link between the buy timing and the policy reversal has produced no official investigation so far.
What else did the disclosure reveal?
The filing runs 927 pages and shows Trump's 2025 total income at roughly $2.24 billion.
Sources include hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency income, over $290 million from golf and club properties, and more than $86 million in legal settlements.
On Reddit's WallStreetBets, some users celebrated having bought before the reversal, while others labelled the episode market manipulation and questioned White House insiders' profit opportunities.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.