President Donald Trump's investment accounts sold between $500,000 and $1 million of ExxonMobil stock on April 7 — the same day Trump announced a ceasefire in the Iran war and hours before Exxon shares opened 6.5% lower — according to financial disclosures reviewed by CBS News.

Exxon closed at $163.91 on April 7, before Trump announced the ceasefire that evening, and opened at $153.52 the following morning.

The sale was one of hundreds of thousands of dollars in purchases and sales involving Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and other oil and gas companies during the first half of 2026, according to filings with the Office of Government Ethics — the agency that administers the annual financial disclosure system created by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 — as reported by CBS News. The trading continued through a war that sent oil prices sharply higher and delivered some of the strongest earnings for U.S. oil majors since 2022.

ExxonMobil and Chevron ultimately earned a combined $26.5 billion in the second quarter, as the Iran war and disruption to oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow Persian Gulf chokepoint through which roughly a fifth of the world's oil trade passes — drove crude prices and refining margins sharply higher. Exxon reported $14.5 billion in net income — more than double its year-earlier profit and its best result in four years — while Chevron reported record net income of $12.2 billion, nearly five times its year-earlier result. Trump subsequently accused the companies of making "too much money" and demanded that they cut fuel prices.

CBS reported that Trump's accounts executed roughly 3,600 stock and securities trades worth between $212 million and $695 million during the first quarter alone. Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee estimate that his oil and gas holdings increased in value from between $13 million and $46 million at the start of the year to between $17 million and $61 million by mid-August; the wide ranges reflect the broad value brackets used on federal disclosure forms rather than precise figures. The estimate does not include trades made during 2026.

The White House said Trump does not direct the trades. Spokesman Davis Ingle told CBS that the portfolio is managed independently by third-party financial institutions using computer-based model portfolios, and that Trump and his family cannot influence when securities are bought or sold.

Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust, a break from recent precedent under which presidents including Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush put their holdings into blind trusts; in his first term, Trump likewise kept ownership of his business while handing day-to-day control to his sons, drawing criticism from government ethics watchdogs. Federal law does not prohibit presidents from owning or trading individual stocks, and while the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 requires members of Congress to disclose most personal trades within 45 days, that reporting rule does not apply to the president. Legislation such as the Presidential Conflicts of Interest Act, introduced in multiple Congresses by Senator Elizabeth Warren, would require presidents to divest assets or use blind trusts, but no such bill has become law. His energy holdings remain a small portion of a fortune that Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion.

By Charles Kennedy for OilPrice.com