Amid significant scrutiny on her — and other members of Congress — Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi disclosed some stock trades that her husband Paul Pelosi made last month.
Pelosi is a professional investor, but many people have criticized some of the trades he’s made in the past because he’s either turned major profits, or avoided major losses, before big pieces of legislation were passed in Congress.
As the former Speaker of the House, Pelosi was criticized heavily, especially as some members of Congress called for new legislation that would ban all Congress members from trading individual stocks.
Things got a little more curious when Pelosi fought back hard against those proposals, refusing to even bring some of them up for vote — even though they were introduced by members of her own party.
On Tuesday, though, Pelosi filed disclosures on Tuesday that showed that her husband increased exposure to various AI technologies when he bought additional shares of Nvidia and executed call options he had on Broadcom.
According to the disclosure, between June 24 and July 1, Pelosi purchased 20 of these call options with a strike price of $800 and an expiration date of June 20 of next year. The trades were valued between $1 million and $5 million.
He also purchased 10,000 shares of Nvidia, which had a value between $1 million and $5 million.
Pelosi also sold a lot of stock in that timeframe, which includes 2,500 shares of Tesla — valued between $250,000 and $500,000 — and 2,000 shares of Visa — valued between $500,000 and $1 million.
Members of Congress don’t have to disclose exact value amounts in these reports, but rather only have to categorize them by value ranges, as above.
In the wake of those calls to ban Congress members and their spouses from trading individual stocks, Pelosi fought hard against it. Those pushing for the legislation say that members of Congress could be privy to non-public and/or sensitive information, which could give them an advantage when trading stocks.
In December of 2021, though, Pelosi replied to the possibility that stock trading could be banned by saying:
“We are a free-market economy. They (members of Congress) should be able to participate in that.”
In July of 2022, the then-Speaker of the House denied that her husband made any stock trades after she shared some information with him, saying “absolutely not” in response to those inquiries.
Yet, members of Congress — and their spouses — often do very well with stock trades, so much so that people have started to track their trades. Many ETFs have even been created that buy and sell the same shares that Congress members share.
And, to date, many of them have performed quite well.
Earlier this year, the Unusual Whales Democratic ETF — named after Pelosi, basically — surged 30% since it was launched in February of 2023. In that same time period, the S&P 500 as a whole gained 24%.
