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Trump Complained About Big Oil Profits, But Dumped Exxon Stock On Ceasefire Day

Zero Rss
1 month 2 weeks ago
Trump Complained About Big Oil Profits, But Dumped Exxon Stock On Ceasefire Day

By Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com,

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 transaction 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 as reported by CBS News. 

Those trades 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 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 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, and federal law does not prohibit presidents from owning or trading individual stocks. His energy holdings remain a small portion of a fortune Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 19:15
Tyler Durden

Moody's Downgrades Baltimore City's Credit Rating Amid Population Collapse

Zero Rss
1 month 2 weeks ago
Moody's Downgrades Baltimore City's Credit Rating Amid Population Collapse

Moody's Ratings downgraded Democrat-led Baltimore City's bond rating this week, highlighting a rapidly deteriorating financial situation as declining reserves, depleted utility funds, and mounting borrowing costs strain the crime-ridden metro area best known for the hit HBO series The Wire.

Local outlet Fox Baltimore reports that the ratings agency lowered Baltimore's rating from Aa2 to Aa3, citing "declining fund balance and cash levels across all government operations," with much of the deterioration concentrated in utility and internal-service funds.

Moody's explained that the city's finances have weakened since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite efforts and forecasts aimed at stabilizing reserves. The new Aa3 rating remains investment grade, but the downgrade suggests that the municipal bond market will demand a higher rate when lending to the city.

In a statement, the ratings agency said the downgrade "reflects the trend of declining fund balance and cash levels across all government operations, largely concentrated in the utility and internal service funds."

Economist Anirban Basu warned that the city's financial position is deteriorating and that this is "not great news."

"This is a city now with over $4 billion in outstanding bonds, outstanding debt in that form," said Basu. "And the decline in the bond rating from Aa2 to Aa3 simply means that when the city goes to float its next set of bonds, it's going to pay more interest or higher interest rates on those bonds, which makes financing infrastructure and other city expenditures more expensive."

Basu continued, "A lot of our fiscal concerns, including how much we want to spend on education, how much we need to spend on infrastructure, and the fact that other city funds have also been downgraded, including the water, sewer, and internal service funds, have been downgraded recently."

Related:

Fox Baltimore stopped short of addressing a much deeper structural problem: Baltimore has seen a massive exodus of residents, losing more than 70,000 residents, or about 11% of its population, over the past two decades. 

That population collapse (back to 100-year lows) has eroded the city's tax base while leaving fewer residents to support its debt, infrastructure, and public-service obligations, making the city widely unaffordable for many of the productive residents, hence the population exodus. 

Related:

Years of progressive policy experiments, elevated violent crime, and left-wing governance in City Hall have transformed the city into an epic fiscal mess and, by some standards, a failed city.

Tyler Durden Thu, 08/27/2026 - 18:50
Tyler Durden

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