Ann Saphir/Reuters
- Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan made million-dollar stock trades in popular stocks last year, according to a disclosure form.
- Kaplan bought more than $1 million worth of Google and Oracle, while he bought and sold shares of Tesla and Amazon.
- Kaplan has been a consistently hawkish member of the Federal Reserve who has voiced concerns about rising inflation and favors an early taper.
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Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan made million-dollar stock trades in a handful of popular stocks last year, according to a disclosure form provided by his bank that was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The disclosure details million-dollar buys and sells in shares of Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and more. The trades came amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and as Kaplan has leaned more hawkish than some of his Fed peers, voicing concerns about rising inflation and favoring an early taper to the Fed's monthly bond purchases.
Kaplan was more active in trading stocks than his Fed president peers, making a number of buy and sell trades in 25 individual stocks and ETFs last year. Kaplan also made multiple buy and sell trades worth more than $1 million in S&P index futures, according to the disclosure form.
Kaplan reported holding 27 individual stocks, funds, or alternative assets that were worth at least $1 million. Those stock holdings included at least $1 million positions in Apple, Tesla, Verizon, General Electric, Boeing, Facebook, Google, and Amazon, among others.
A spokesman for the Dallas Fed said Mr. Kaplan's trading was reviewed and approved by the bank's general counsel, according to The Wall Street Journal. There is precedent for Fed Presidents to be active participants in trading the stock market, with Kaplan's predecessor Richard Fisher also trading stocks during his tenure as Fed president.
Kaplan has been President of the Dallas Fed since 2015, and was previously the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs up until 2006. Kaplan went on to become a professor at Harvard Business School.