The article never says this, but her husband, Paul, is a longtime investor / VC [1]. There’s obviously still a huge opportunity for leakage of information that Nancy Pelosi receives, but the trades don’t actually look suspicious nor requiring non-public information.<p>There was some reporting on this issue more broadly when Senator Burr seemed to place trades directly due to coronavirus information, which included Pelosi’s husband’s trades.<p>Edit to add: I would concur with others that we probably need to restrict trading for politicians and their family, the same way we do insiders at corporations. Index funds okay, specific stocks or perceived competition, no.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pelosi" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pelosi</a>
Instead of fixating that Pelosi made more than others I think right question is, why someone who actually can impact stock options and also has information not available to the public is allowed to trade?
Nancy Pelosi's husband is CEO of a investment firm. It shouldn't be <i>that</i> surprising that she tops the list for investments.<p>As others online have pointed out, despite an above average year, her portfolio is still underperforming an S&P 500 index fund with the dividends reinvested.<p>Should politicians be forced to put their assets in a blind trust while in office? Yeah, probably. But I don't think I will indict Pelosi's slightly above average year of investments as evidence of anything in particular.
I am shocked that politicians are even allowed to trade options, I feel like shorting stocks and option trading should be off the table once you are elected to office.
Perhaps someone could create an index fund that tracks trades by members of Congress. Though on second thought it might not be very useful since there can be quite a delay between the transaction and when it's disclosed.
"This is pretty incredible, for an average return of her stocks and options is 56.15%. The S&P, with its raucous best performing year, is only up 36% from last June"<p>Strange to compare against sp500 when her holdings are more aligned with NASDAQ, up ~50% from last June.
> Her one year returns for her stocks is 45.59%, and her option returns are 66.7%.<p>I mean, any other year and that'd be extraordinary, but I'm just some schmuck who put my 401k mostly in a high growth index fund and I got over 70% last year. I wasn't even trying.
This is mostly her husband's trading, which probably constitutes somewhat of a loophole in the legislation controlling stock purchases by members of congress. Still, the transactions were reported as required, and trading based on insider knowledge is illegal, so he would be subject to prosecution if that's what he was doing.<p>The optics are bad, for sure.<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/pelosi-husband-s-tech-stock-spotlights-law-on-lawmaker-trades" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/pelosi-hu...</a>
Not sure why the % returns really matter here.<p>Even if you lose money, insider trading is still insider trading. Congress + senators 100% receive insider information. Even if its not near-term merger announcements or big federal contracts - they still have an extremely advantaged position and access to information that the general public doesn't have.<p>Its ridiculous that they can trade individual stocks, yet alone options.<p>They should be restricted from buying individual stocks, and should only be allowed to buy mutual funds and ETFs at a minimum. Pretty much any employee on Wall Street (even if "back-office") has similar restrictions.<p>I don't even know why this is a question - the optics of short-term levered bets from elected officials (or family of) is terrible. Completely ruins any resemblance of "public service."<p>Even with this, it might not be enough. Elected officials could still buy the TQQQ ETF (3x leverage on NASDAQ) prior to a stimulus bill passing. It would be too onerous to not allow any stock exposure, but maybe they should be required to disclose trades in real-time vs. at the end of every quarter.
Sounds like smart insider trading. I know some forums only accessible via the TOR network that trade insider info. Your first post is for verification, the ones after for either selling them or trading with others. If you trade your company's quarterly numbers with numbers from another company it's nearly impossible to proof that you used insider information.<p>IMHO the whole system needs a reformation. You should only be allowed to invest long-term, at least one month, probably years. Day trading and option contracts enable illegal insider trading.
I wonder if politicians should be required to share their portfolios in real time. Then the rest of us could buy index funds based on their trading habits.
I'd be fine with politicians being paid more if it was completely illegal (with prison time) for them or their partners to do this.<p>Seems like the system is built in a way that encourages them to insider trade and throw kickbacks around to maximize their wealth while in power and after.
Writing regulation policy is one hell of a way to perform insider trading. Why is this legal?<p>"Most of Pelosi's gains are quite interesting, given the timing of her plays. For example, she was able to get into TSLA, DIS around stimulus news, NVDA before American Semiconductor funding was announced, among a long list of interesting picks. Mr. Whale leaves it to the reader to check her transactions and the news around her purchases (all available for free on the platform). She also timed the NFLX buys on June 18th perfectly. It was released on July 14th that NFLX is entering the videogame space, causing the stock to rally significantly."
Many years ago, 60 minutes interviewed her about these kind of dealings:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZ7DdT5ZoI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZ7DdT5ZoI</a>
They sold Amazon calls going into COVID. A call is a right to buy so selling a call means you have an obligation to sell the stock to the buyer at the strike price on or before the expiry (assuming American option). Can’t see the strike price or expiry but there is no way they didn’t lose money on that trade since Amazon was up up up and away every month after that and it would have had to be way out of the money not to trigger. In other words, not a particularly heads up trade.
Oh and looking more closely, this methodology is super poor (though I’m sympathetic to the challenge with the disclosure format).<p>Basically, by assuming that all the trades were the maximum of the range (and per trade), it’s overweighting the PayPal and Crowdstrike performance and downweighting the MSFT and GOOG “under performance” (they bought GOOG near the top?).<p>I don’t follow why most of the Feb 20 options aren’t being valued either. <i>Those</i> were the “scandalous” trades. And they were all (IIRC), 1-year out LEAPs or something. Seemed a reasonable thing at the time! (“People are panicking, buy now and assume it’s back to normal in a year”).<p>Has someone done a more careful analysis? (At the very least, I strongly doubt that the positions would be the same between the crowd strike and MSFT shares, and that the MSFT shares were purchased alongside the MSFT options as a hedge).<p>Edit: And umm, all the options trades are listed <i>explicitly</i> as the number of contracts purchased. So people can easily look up the VWAP or similar for the purchase date and get a real number...
Elected & appointed govt workers and their immediate families shouldn't be permitted to buy/sell any stock while in office or 5 years following.<p>And they shouldn't be allowed to take jobs/money (including "speaking fees", a.k.a. bribes) from publicly owned corporations for 15 years after leaving public office.
Studying Pelosi’s portfolio is one of the key strategies every trader should know by now.<p>I have made a lot of money following her trades, particularly when she jumped in on Crowdstrike right before the government security hacks.<p>This lady can tell the future. /s
Why are all of the members of Congress extremely wealthy? Doesn't seem particularly representative of the general population.
Members of the UK Parliament are generally upper-class, but they're not all extremely wealthy.
Far beyond limiting what members of congress or other high office holders can invest in while in office, I think the ideal should be that public office holders must play a Rawlsian gamble: when they leave office, we select a random citizen, and their level of wealth is wiped to match that citizen. Excess goes to a fund for public campaign financing.<p>Not only should politicians not be incentivized to select policies which benefit them specifically, but they should be incentivized to select policies which materially benefit the population overall.
Interesting that DelBene is also so high on the list but not really mentioned at all<p>"Her husband, Kurt DelBene, is Chief Digital Officer and EVP of Corporate Strategy, Core Services Engineering and Operations at Microsoft Corporation,[33] and led the effort to fix the Healthcare.gov website at the request of President Barack Obama.[34]"<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzan_DelBene#Personal_life" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzan_DelBene#Personal_life</a>
In the same way that CEOs trades are planned months in advance and happen regardless of the market, we should make Congress people should have to do the same
Just an observation: IF we take it as GIVEN that policymakers are going to find a way to earn some fixed amount X which is greater than their salary (this is a big assumption and probably not true, but just for a thought experiment)<p>THEN maybe making money from stock options is actually better than taking money from lobbyists? Lawmakers can make money from both hurting and helping companies, so it doesn't create a particular incentive to go out and help PARTICULAR companies (that said, there is an incentive to create volatility, which isn't great). Meanwhile, lobbying tends to advantage some of the least ethical companies (e.g. Opiods, fossil fuels) because the only incentive is to HELP the company at the expense of customers.<p>To be clear, I don't think it's right for lawmakers to make any more by virtue of their position than the salaries set forth by the law. I'm just saying that of the several unethical ways they can make money, stock options have incentives least misaligned with the public good.
Sorry if this is a stupid question - I've only seen options as a compensation mechanism. Can you buy options on the open market just like shares? If not, how do politicians end up with options?
Shouldn't HN steer clear of things like this with a political slant? She is a very divisive figure and I don't see how this sort of article makes HN better.
Nancy Pelosi is as dirty as they come. Of course she will use any advantage she can to gain wealth and power. Why this is allowed is beyond me. Martha Stewart spent time in prison for doing much less.
America is a plutocracy. Congress people (or their family) making money from their influence is about American as apple pie and pickup trucks.<p>It takes money to get elected and stay elected, so rich people get elected. While they take advantage of their political power while elected to make money, they also make money after being elected as well, through speaking and other means. The whole point of this process is to make money. Again, American, we like money.<p>So if you don't like all this, you're a socialist and bad person. Shame on you for being so un-American. Instead get some money and join the party!
This has been debunked over and over starting in 2012.
Nanci Pelosi is not part of a crime family. Stop trying to claim otherwise. Snopes debunked this okay like 2 years ago.<p><a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nancy-pelosi-crime-family/" rel="nofollow">https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nancy-pelosi-crime-family/</a>
She does as well as Rentech’s Medallion fund. Looks like Warren Buffett has a competitor.<p>Reminds me of Hillary Clinton’s remarkable skill trading cattle futures. I suppose great politicians must also be great at reading the market. Incredible talent.
1) Nancy Pelosi is ethical and an upstanding citizen, a true hero-person among ordinary people.
2) There are no prospective conflicts of interest in having your significant other trade on your behalf. If there were any such conflicts, they're acceptable anyway.
3) There's nothing unusual around these trades. Many lawmakers underperform the market anyway. Also some people under-perform and over-perform. Nothing to see here nor question.
4) Legislating around the companies you buy and sell is an acceptable, both in governance structure and in economic opportunism
5) There is no way to mitigate these conflicts of interest anyway, so there is no point in paying attention to them.