'Great time to buy' hours before a market-moving pause
Trump posted 'THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!' about four hours before announcing a 90-day tariff pause that sent the S&P 500 up more than 9%; Sen. Adam Schiff called for an investigation, and he and Sen. Ruben Gallego wrote to the White House chief of staff and the acting director of the Office of Government Ethics.
What happened
Trump's financial disclosure, filed in mid-2026, showed 327 individual stock purchases worth as much as $12.8 million on April 8, 2025, the day before the pause, in companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and Alphabet, according to The New Republic's reading of a Sludge analysis. The $12.8 million is the top of the disclosed purchase range: money he spent, not money he made. What the trades earned after the pause is not on any page in this record, so the row is logged, not counted.
Why it matters
Trump posted a public 'great time to buy' message about four hours before announcing a 90-day tariff pause that sent markets up more than 9%, and his financial disclosure later showed 327 stock purchases the prior day. With the president holding market-moving, nonpublic knowledge of an imminent policy reversal, the timing raises concerns about trading advantages for insiders.