In a mandated filing with the Office of Government Ethics released Thursday, President Donald Trump was found to have made more than 1,000 stock transactions in June, including thousands of dollars invested in energy companies that were…
Page F2From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 3 September 2026
President's portfolio cashes in on the oil surge from the war pushing gas prices to a fourth-day high.
As it ran on the front
Oil closed higher for the fourth straight day this week, the wire report said, as renewed U.S. and Iran strikes strained global supply and diesel edged toward a record. Gas prices followed, and CBS News described the pump numbers as feeding inflation fears — the ordinary consequence of a war that has, this week, resumed after a ceasefire that did not hold. In Kuwait and the UAE, Iran claimed new strikes on U.S.-linked bases while the Pentagon looked into reports of a strike on a wedding party. That is the ledger on one side: barrels up, diesel up, the tank up, and costs the wire report never puts a dollar figure on.
On the other side of the ledger sits a filing. The Office of Government Ethics released the president's mandated second-quarter disclosure in late August, covering April through June — the same three months in which the Iran war continued, paused for a ceasefire, and restarted. The filing lists more than 1,000 stock transactions. Thousands of dollars of them sit in energy companies, the same sector now posting the record profits behind the gas prices in tonight's segment.…
…(cont) Reconciling this is arithmetic. The filing covers June. The four-day oil run covered here is September. Two different months, one portfolio, one war, one sector rising in both windows. A count is not a motive: this desk cannot answer why the trades were made, only when — in the same quarter as a war that has since produced the run of gains those holdings were sitting in.
What the filing does establish is exposure. The man whose administration is prosecuting the war holds stock in the industry the war enriches. The commuter paying more per gallon this week and the portfolio posting gains off the same barrel are reading the same oil price off two different columns of the same public record. One column is the pump. The other is the disclosure form. Neither is hidden, hon — both are filed on schedule, sitting in a government drawer, waiting for someone to set them side by side.
That is the job here: not to guess intent, but to place the June filing next to the September price run and note that both columns are denominated in the same commodity, moving the same direction, in the same war.
“You're paying more at the pump this week because of a war, and the same war just showed up as a gain on some guy's stock filing — and that guy runs the war. Nobody's saying he called the missile strikes to pump his portfolio, I'm saying the portfolio doesn't care why the barrel went up, it just went up, same as your tank. That's the con: they don't need to plan it when the system just automatically cuts them in.”
“Look, a president's assets are managed independently, that's how disclosure works, the filing itself proves transparency, not wrongdoing — wait, did I just say the filing proving he made money off the war is the good part? That's not — let me restart. Presidents hold diversified portfolios, energy is a normal sector allocation, and frankly blaming him for the market reacting to world events is what, now the President controls oil futures too?”
The receipts
Iran claims new strikes against American forces in Kuwait and the UAE as the Pentagon says it's looking into reports of a U.S. strike hitting a wedding party.
Oil prices are reacting to developments in the war in Iran, with ripple effects felt throughout the stock market. CBS News' Kelly O'Grady explains more.
This week’s renewed strikes by the United States and Iran strain the flow of energy and diminish expectations the disruption will end soon.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.