“Do what Nancy does”
Why the Net Is Celebrating Nancy Pelosi’s Trades
By Charlotte Raskopf
02/20/2022, 4:29 p.m
Posts on various online platforms have led to the belief that the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is a very successful investor. That’s strange because she doesn’t own any shares herself. What’s up with their hot bets.
One user of the online portal Reddit is certain that Nancy Pelosi is the greatest investor of all time. Not Warren Buffett or Peter Lynch or Bill Gates, writes the author, who calls himself gorays21, but Nancy Pelosi.
You have calls on Roblox, an online gaming platform – which presented winning numbers on Wednesday. “Remember, the genius Pelosi bought Google calls before the stock split, and Disney calls – with spectacular results.”
Gorays21 is not alone in his admiration for Pelosi: the speaker of the US House of Representatives from the Democrats has become an investment icon on various platforms. She does not buy or sell any shares herself, and does not even own any, as spokesmen revealed in the summer of last year. Although one Reddit user writes “Do what Nancy does”: The trades attributed to the Democrat on various platforms are actually her husband’s.
Trades are publicly viewable
Paul Pelosi is an 81-year-old businessman who owns a real estate and investment firm – and who appears to have a lucky hand in the stock market. What makes his trades so interesting for forum participants: They can follow them down to the last detail – and thus imitate them.
US law obliges members of Congress not only to disclose their own stock transactions, but also those of their families. For example, in a December 2021 report, anyone can see that Paul Pelosi bet on shares in Alphabet, Micron Technology, Walt Disney, and Roblox, among others. In general, tech stocks are very popular with him.
In the Reddit forum “WallStreetBets” the trades are hotly debated, sometimes celebrated, sometimes criticized. Some participants would even like a “Pelosi ETF” that reflects the share purchases. Incidentally, it was also the participants of the “WallStreetBets” forum who, at the beginning of 2021, Gamestop stock skyrocketed to unprecedented heights. At that time, hedge funds lost massively, according to the research and analysis company Ortex, it was around eleven billion dollars.
On Tiktok, videos about Pelosi’s trades get thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands of views. And discussions about the investments are also piling up on Twitter.
The trades reported by Nancy Pelosi attract particular attention, probably because she is under special scrutiny as Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the Pelosi are enormously wealthy. She is by far not the only member of parliament to report stock transactions – nor the most successful: The blog “Unusual Whales” has evaluated the mandatory reports and comes to the conclusion that the Pelosi trades are the most successful among the Democrats – however, there are five Republicans who were more successful in 2021.
Politically sensitive
A spokesman emphasized that Nancy Pelosi herself was not involved in any transactions. Because even if many forum participants admire her – or her husband – the stock transactions are a politically sensitive area for the democrat.
In addition, a law is currently being debated in the USA that would prohibit members of the Senate and House of Representatives from trading in individual shares. Nancy Pelosi was long considered an opponent of the regulation, saying that parliamentarians should also be able to participate in the free market.
This position did not necessarily endear Pelosi to the left in her party. The background: Members of parliament, the accusation goes, have access to information that can give them an advantage on the stock market.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, also a member of the House of Representatives, is clearly in favor of restrictions: It is “absolutely ridiculous” that members of Congress can hold and trade individual shares during their term in office. “The access and influence we have should be used for the public interest, not for our profit,” she wrote on Twitter. “It shouldn’t be legal for us to trade individual stocks with the information we have.”
Recently, Pelosi also gave in, albeit not euphorically: If other MPs were in favor of the new law, then they would also support it. The law will not only ban stock transactions by members of parliament, but also by their spouses. Pelosi noted that the ban on trading in individual stocks should then also apply to the Supreme Court – because so far stock transactions have not had to be reported there.
The article first appeared at Capital.de.