Stocks cheerleader Trump invests little in Wall Street
NEW YORK — Even from the hospital, as his doctors were administering a mixture of drugs to battle the coronavirus, President Donald Trump couldn’t quite help himself.
“STOCK MARKET UP BIG,” he blared in one tweet. “The Stock Market is getting ready to break its all time high,” came another. “NEXT YEAR WILL BE THE BEST EVER.”
Trump’s relentless cheerleading for the stock market, taking full credit for its gains, has been a hallmark of his presidency, through more than 150 tweets and exuberant rhetoric at his rallies. Yet behind the bluster is a simple fact of which most voters are unaware:
Trump barely has any of his own money in the stock market.
“It’s like Trump Vodka — he wants everyone to drink it, but he doesn’t drink it himself,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Cresset Wealth Advisors.
Deep in The New York Times’ recent report on Trump’s tax returns is the fact that he sold more than $200 million in stocks and bonds in the three years leading up to his inauguration. And an Associated Press analysis of his financial disclosures since then shows as much as $8 million more was sold in his first three years in office, even with his investments now in a trust, beyond his direct control.
Significantly, those disclosures — which give figures in ranges, not exact amounts — show no substantial buying to make up for it. That left him a stock portfolio last year that ranged between $693,000 — less than what many Americans have in their 401(k)s— and $2.2 million. Even that top figure is less than one-tenth of 1% of his fortune, estimated by Forbes at $2.5 billion.
“Why would you talk up the stock market and not own stocks at the same time?” said David Rosenberg, former chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch.
The White House referred queries about Trump’s stock holdings to the Trump Organization, which declined to comment.
Whatever the reason for selling, Trump’s lack of a substantial stake has not stopped him from vigorously touting the run-up in the stock market. Polls consistently show Trump’s handling of the economy is his strongest issue with voters, and the stock market has withstood the coronavirus crisis better than the economy as a whole. The Standard and Poor’s 500 index has jumped 59 percent since the last presidential election, recovering all the ground lost during a March plunge.
American families now have an average of 15 percent of their assets riding on the market, according to Federal Reserve data, and the richest 1 percent even more: 40 percent.
Some have speculated Trump has sold stocks in recent years because he needs cash to pay his debts or to prop up golf properties that have reportedly lost hundreds in millions of dollars. While selling one of his properties could raise alarm bells, unloading some stock might not.