President Trump rang the opening bells of the NYSE and Nasdaq from the Oval Office on Monday, celebrating a new law that just deposited $1,000 of seed money into millions of American children's investment accounts.
Six million Trump Accounts have already been opened for children under 18, the Treasury Department confirmed, just two days after the accounts went live nationwide on July 4. For the first time in either exchange's history, the NYSE and Nasdaq jointly rang their opening bells not from lower Manhattan but from the White House, with Trump himself pressing the button alongside a lineup of financial heavyweights.
The event drew Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, SEC Chair Paul Atkins, NYSE President Lynn Martin, Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Altimeter Capital's Brad Gerstner, who founded the Invest America initiative that helped shape the program. The accounts were created a year ago in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping tax and spending law Trump signed in July 2025, and Monday marked the first day money in them actually started trading.
Every child born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, who is a U.S. citizen with a Social Security number qualifies for a one-time $1,000 deposit from the federal government. Of the 6 million accounts opened so far, 1.4 million will receive that federal contribution, according to Treasury. Parents, relatives, and even employers can add up to $5,000 a year on top of it, with employer contributions capped at $2,500 counting toward that same limit. By law, the money can only go into low-cost index funds tracking the broader U.S. stock market, with expense ratios capped at 0.10 percent. The default holding for every account is the State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF.
That is a deliberate design choice. No bonds, no actively managed funds, no exotic bets with a child's money. It grows quietly in the market until the child turns 18, at which point the account converts into something closer to a traditional IRA.
Set against a 529 college savings plan, the Trump Account is smaller and simpler. Families can put far more into a 529, up to $19,000 a year per donor without touching the federal gift tax exemption, and 529 withdrawals for education stay tax-free. Trump Account withdrawals get taxed as ordinary income. But a 529 only pays out cleanly for school. A Trump Account has no such restriction and, unlike a custodial IRA, requires no earned income to qualify, meaning a newborn can have one funded before ever holding a job. Financial advisers quoted by CNBC have been blunt that the accounts do not replace a 529 or a Roth IRA so much as sit alongside them, another tool rather than a silver bullet.
A tangible number versus a slogan
Trump used the bell-ringing to frame the accounts as proof that the tax law Republicans pushed through Congress last year, without a single Democrat vote, delivers something concrete rather than an abstract promise. A newborn in Ohio or Texas now has a federally seeded brokerage account before the parents have finished picking a name off the list. That is a different kind of argument than the one Democrats have made against the broader bill, which centers on its cost and its tax cuts favoring higher earners. Republicans point to the accounts as evidence the law also puts cash directly in the hands, or rather the future portfolios, of working families' kids.
The total already opened, 6 million accounts, is still a small slice of the roughly 73 million Americans under 18. Treasury has not set a hard deadline for families to claim the $1,000 seed deposit for eligible newborns, but officials at the event urged parents to open accounts now rather than wait, since the money sits uninvested and idle until the account exists. Whether that translates into millions more sign-ups or fades into another underused benefit program will depend on how well banks, employers, and the Treasury Department publicize it in the coming months. For now, the administration has a stock-market bell and a six-figure account count to point to, and Congress will be watching whether that number keeps climbing before the 2026 midterms.
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