The Trump Administration’s Picks Are Beating The Market. One Stock Accounts for Most of the Gain.

The U.S. government has deployed about $21 billion across 16 announced deals during President Trump’s second term, with eight stakes in public companies. The largest was an $11.1 billion Intel stake (nearly 10% purchased at $20.47), which has surged roughly 370%, turning 433.3 million shares into roughly $49 billion on paper — a roughly $40 billion unrealized gain; the shares cannot be sold before Aug. 27. Other targeted investments are concentrated in critical-minerals and defense-related firms: MP Materials is up about 136% (≈$1B paper profit), Trilogy Metals shows gains contingent on project obligations, and the investment tied to L3Harris’s Missile Solutions unit is down ~11%. While the gains are material for individual positions, they are small relative to the federal budget. The moves are characterized as strategic, aimed at securing supply chains rather than maximizing returns, and come with special terms (warrants, below-market strikes, purchase obligations) that limit simple replication by private investors.