The Accounts Sold, Then Changed Direction
The sequence appears in federal financial disclosures covering accounts in which President Donald Trump is named as the beneficiary. An Office of Government Ethics Periodic Transaction Report posted Sept. 22 runs 37 pages and contains 1,156 securities trades from July alone.
Buried among them are three Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) Class A transactions. The accounts sold Strategy shares worth between $1,001 and $15,000 on July 8, bought the same dollar range on July 24, and then made the larger $50,001-to-$100,000 purchase on July 27. Strategy is the business intelligence (BI) company that largely pivoted into a full-fledged bitcoin treasury firm in 2020.
The selling had actually started earlier. A previous filing shows two Strategy sales on June 23 and June 24 totaling somewhere between $16,002 and $65,000. There were no Strategy purchases reported in June.
Then the stock got clobbered. Strategy, which had traded in the high $180s in May, sank as low as $81.81 shortly after those June sales. The accounts eventually flipped from sellers to buyers while MSTR was still hanging around its 2026 lows.
An 80% Move in Less Than Two Months
The numbers get pretty wild from there. Strategy closed at $91.67 on July 24, when the first repurchase was reported. By Sept. 22, shares closed at $167.33, leaving the stock roughly 80% higher about two months later. MSTR has lost a bit of steam since $BTC drifted lower on Wednesday, and by Wall Street’s close, shares were down more than 2%.
The larger July 27 transaction has done pretty well too. The bitcoin treasury firm Strategy closed at $98.65 that day, putting the stock roughly 70% higher. There is an important limitation here. Federal disclosure forms report transaction values in ranges rather than exact dollar amounts, share counts, or execution prices. The filing also doesn’t reveal how many Strategy shares the accounts currently hold. A periodic transaction report records reportable trades over $1,000, not the entire portfolio.
And this wasn’t the accounts’ first dance with MSTR, either. A May disclosure covering January through March listed eight Strategy (MSTR) transactions, including a Feb. 12 purchase in the same $50,001-to-$100,000 range as the July 27 buy.
Bitcoin Put Strategy Back in the Driver’s Seat
There’s a fairly straightforward explanation for why Strategy shares were capable of moving so violently. In July, Strategy itself had temporarily stopped adding bitcoin. Its holdings remained at 843,775 $BTC during the weeks of July 13-19 and July 20-26 while the company sold common shares through its at-the-market program and accumulated a U.S. dollar reserve exceeding $3 billion.
Meanwhile, MSTR had fallen from May’s high $180s toward the low $80s. That was the window in which Trump’s accounts finished selling and started buying again. Bitcoin subsequently recovered toward the mid-$80,000 range, and Strategy returned to accumulating the cryptocurrency. By Sept. 21, the company reported holding 846,000 $BTC acquired for an aggregate cost of about $63.8 billion.
Strategy’s enormous bitcoin treasury makes its equity particularly sensitive to bitcoin’s moves. When the leading crypto asset picks up steam, MSTR can move a lot harder. That helps explain the 80% rebound without establishing that anyone involved knew the recovery was coming.
The Filing Doesn’t Say Trump Made the Trades
That distinction matters. The disclosure carries Trump’s name because he is the beneficiary of the accounts. It does not establish that the president personally chose the stocks, selected the dates or pressed a button to execute the trades.
The White House and Trump Organization have said the investment accounts are controlled by outside financial managers and that neither Trump nor his family directs what they buy or sell. Of course, Trump critics believe otherwise. Officials have also said some transactions follow model portfolios designed to track recognized indexes.
The July filing itself is enormous. Its 1,156 reported transactions have been estimated at a combined $79 million to $270 million. Strategy represents only a small piece of the Trump pie. July 20 sales of Microsoft and Amazon each landed in the range of $5 million to $25 million, while crypto-linked transactions included a Coinbase purchase and sales of MARA Holdings and the bitcoin miner and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure provider Cleanspark.
Thousands of Trades Have Drawn Scrutiny
The sheer volume of activity has attracted political scrutiny. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., pressed Trump in August over his financial disclosures, citing more than 14,000 reported stock trades worth as much as $1.06 billion in 2025 and another 3,555 worth as much as $500 million during the first quarter of 2026. They identified roughly 30 transactions, reported by the press, that they argued warranted examination, and asked for details about the outside investment managers.
Those are allegations and questions from Democratic lawmakers, not findings that Trump directed trades or violated the law. The White House’s position is that independent managers control the accounts without input from Trump or his family. That leaves the Strategy transactions in an interesting place. The documented sequence is striking enough on its own. What the disclosure cannot tell anyone is arguably the most interesting part: who actually made the call.
