Credit: New York Magazine
Disclaimer: This article may contain the personal views and opinions of the author.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi had an awful final quarter in 2022, in terms of stocks.
The Pelosis reportedly lost $2.5 million in stock value, centered around four main stocks:
$853K on PayPal stock
$733K on Salesforce options
$500K on Tesla stock
$235K on Roblox options
The Pelosi’s stock trading became a major issue during the later part of her tenure as Speaker. The couple made trades that were very timely that made them money or avoided losses, leading to speculation of insider trading.
Paul Pelosi sold 25,000 shares of Nvidia at approximately $165.05 in July of 2022, which ended up resulting in a loss of $341,365 for him, a set of disclosures revealed.
Business Insider reported:
Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, lost over half a million dollars selling Tesla stock in December as Elon Musk’s electric vehicle and solar panel manufacturer sank amid broader fears about his focus company after his takeover of Twitter.
An investor and venture capitalist, Pelosi’s husband is one of the most prodigious traders connected to a lawmaker. He’s made tens of millions of dollars in stock trades during the past few years, congressional records indicate.
In total, Pelosi reported losing over $2.5 million in the final weeks of 2022. His trades appear to be an example of harvesting, an investing strategy where traders sell some investments at a loss in order to lower the taxes they will face for more successful parts of their portfolio.
Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill, said that she had no knowledge of her husband and his financial transactions.
However, the Pelosis convenient stock trades led to bipartisan calls from Congress to ban members from dabbling in the stock market while serving.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D, Va.) called for new leadership in the Democrat Party after the legislation to ban lawmakers from trading stocks was stopped in the House in October.
“On Tuesday, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Combatting Financial Conflicts of Interest in Government Act prohibiting senior government officials and their family members from trading stocks after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) directed her to craft the legislation in February. However, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) indicated that the bill would not be voted on before the midterms,” Breitbart reported.
Will the new Congress have a different tone? Will they put forward new legislation to ban members from engaging in the stock market?
Now that McCarthy is in and Pelosi is out, will Congress make an effort to weed out corruption? Will they put “America First?”
It was always apparent that Pelosi had only herself in mind, as the Speaker of the House and the third in command.
