U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her venture capitalist husband Paul, who are both 83 years old, reportedly bet millions of dollars last year on a single stock: multinational technology giant Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA), based in Santa Clara, California — despite immense scrutiny and backlash against congressional stock trading.
The former House Speaker bought Nvidia call options on Nov. 22 — her largest stock purchase in the last three years, according to the stock options tracking website Unusual Whales.
According to a disclosure form obtained by Unusual Whales and congresstrading.com, which tracks the publicly-disclosed stock trading activities of members of Congress, Pelosi reported a purchase of 50 call options with a strike price of $120 and an expiration date of Dec. 20, 2024. The filing listed a transaction price of $1 million to $5 million. Unusual Whales pinned the actual price to around $1.8 million.
Nvidia shares traded between $476.90 and $503.35 on the day of purchase.
Based on today’s price, the Nvidia stake is now worth more than $3 million and has made a profit of over $1 million for Pelosi and her husband.
The profit is significantly higher than the average Representative annual salary of $174,000. While serving as Speaker of the House, Pelosi collected the largest Congressional salary of $223,500 annually.
Nvidia joined the $1 trillion market capitalization club in 2023 and was one of the best-performing stocks of the year. Strong third-quarter financial results in November helped boost shares of the semiconductor and lead to higher price targets from analysts.
In January 2024, Nvidia was one of several technology companies to partner with the U.S. government on an artificial intelligence research project.
Pelosi is often scrutinized for the uncanny timing of her highly lucrative stock market transactions. The former House Speaker insists that she does not share privileged information on government contracts and initiatives with her husband before making stock and options trades.
Pelosi previously disclosed buying Nvidia shares before the government passed the CHIPS Act in July 2022, traveling to Taiwan in support of increased semiconductor spending by the U.S. government. After her portfolio position drew increased negative attention, Pelosi subsequently reported prematurely selling Nvidia shares at a substantial loss.
In a filing, Pelosi disclosed the sale of 25,000 Nvidia shares at an average price point of $165.05. The filing also reported that the transaction was done at a loss of $341,365.
Based on a price of $666.71 for Nvidia shares today, the 25,000 shares would be worth $16,667,750. This means the Pelosi’s missed out on potential profits of $12,541,500 from their Nvidia sale that happened in July 2022.
“Pelosi bet millions on NVDA in November using call options. Using a deceptive tactic, she purposely disclosed this on the Friday before Christmas weekend to avoid media coverage,” congresstrading.com revealed on X, formerly Twitter.
Pelosi’s trades under scrutiny
Pelosi and her husband have re-entered the Nvidia game after selling their shares and call options in the AI software company at a total loss of over $700,000 in 2022.
Their ill-timed departures occurred around the same time that the CHIPS and Science Act was passed into law, which Pelosi publicly supported. This law majorly benefited domestic chipmakers like Nvidia.
Since selling their 25,000 shares, the Nvidia stock price has surged by almost 200%, according to the New York Post, which means the value of the Pelosis’ original stake would have been worth in excess of $12.2 million today.
However, the duo has certainly made up for it in other transactions. They have netted millions of dollars in profit from buying call options on other blue-chip stocks such as Salesforce (CRM), Roblox (RBLX), and Disney (DIS).
They have also made some well-timed sales. Notably, Paul Pelosi sold 30,000 shares of Google (GOOGL) stock in December 2022, just one month before the tech giant was sued over alleged antitrust violations.
That transaction had lawmakers crying foul about insider trading. Specifically, it riled up Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who responded by introducing the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act in January 2023.
When announcing the PELOSI Act, he said: “While Wall Street and Big Tech work hand-in-hand with elected officials to enrich each other, hard-working Americans pay the price. The solution is clear: we must immediately and permanently ban all members of Congress from trading stocks.”
Efforts to ban lawmakers’ stock trading
Hawley is by no means alone in trying to tackle this problem. The PELOSI Act followed fast in the footsteps of the Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust in Congress Act, or TRUST Act, introduced by Reps. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Chip Roy of Texas on Jan 12, 2023.
Both bills failed to move the needle in Congress — but they set the scene for a busy year of politicians trying to stifle corruption in Washington.
In July, Hawley took another stab at the problem by co-introducing the bipartisan Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act alongside Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) That proposed law builds on the decade-old Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) law, which is supposed to combat insider trading by members of Congress and their staff.
An Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) to track the stock trading activity of Democrats in Congress called the Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF (BATS:NANC) bears the Representative’s name in the stock ticker.
* This article was expanded from original source at Yahoo Finance.
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