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The stock portfolio of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her investor husband, Paul Pelosi, has experienced massive growth in 2023, as other members of Congress have also managed to increase their wealth via the markets, according to a new report.
The UK’s Daily Mail reported that a tool that replicates trades executed by members of Congress and their families has experienced a nearly 20 percent gain this year, outperforming the stock market average of eight to ten percent per year by twice as much.
“And a separate tool which is dedicated to tracking Nancy Pelosi‘s investments reveals her portfolio has returned a remarkable 50 percent in the last 12 months, vastly outperforming the 17 percent gains of the benchmark S&P500 index of America’s top companies,” the outlet reported, adding: “The tools were created by Quiver Quantitative, which uses public disclosures from members of Congress to mirror their trading activity and track the results.”
The disclosures unveil instances where certain politicians have demonstrated an almost prophetic ability to invest in companies just days before their stock prices soar. Some of these individuals sit on congressional committees associated with the firms they have invested in, the Daily Mail reported.
“You can almost certainly see instances where there seems to be people acting on information that they may have been receiving in committee meetings, or may have been receiving just based on the nature of their job,” James Kardatzke, CEO of Quiver Quantitative, told DailyMail.com.
Other members of Congress — Republicans and Democrats — experienced higher-than-average stock portfolio growth as well this year.
No members of Congress have been accused of insider trading, but the appearance of such successful stock trading — often at times just days before major legislative decisions affecting certain companies are made — has made many Americans suspicious. That is especially true of the former speaker.
The Daily Mail adds: Quiver Quantitative’s separate tracker for Nancy Pelosi’s trading activity has returned around 50 percent since last December. Pelosi has profited hugely from massive gains this year in the stock price of Nvidia, the chipmaker whose valuation has passed $1 trillion thanks to the AI boom. Pelosi also owns millions of dollars worth of Microsoft and Apple stock, which have both risen by around 55 percent since the beginning of the year.
Earlier this year, Pelosi turned heads again with what critics say is a conveniently timed stock sale, leading to new calls for a law that prohibits members of Congress from most trading while in office.
Prior to the November midterms, then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pledged to scrutinize trades and sales made by the California Democrat and her husband after several of them appeared to coincide with legislation making its way through Congress, leading to allegations of insider trading.
A sale that Nancy Pelosi disclosed in late December appears to have reenergized Republicans who want to crack down on the practice as a matter of restoring some faith in the institution. According to a congressional disclosure form, she sold around 30,000 shares of Google stock roughly three weeks before the Justice Department and eight states announced an anti-trust lawsuit against Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company.
Source of article & source of the sellhttps://t.co/zvweRQyLo0 pic.twitter.com/Vx4KYKERMu
— Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker ♟ (@PelosiTracker_) January 25, 2023
“This latest action comes more than two years after the agency and a group of state attorneys general joined in another suit alleging Google’s search and search advertising businesses violate U.S. antitrust laws,” Yahoo! Finance reported Wednesday, adding: The Justice Department’s [complaint] alleges that Google’s suite of online advertising tools prevents competitors from entering the online advertising market and blocks publishers from monetizing their own content.
The department further claims that Google is illegally using, or trying to use, its monopoly power, and should be required to divest a host of entities that allow it to carry out the allegedly offending behavior.
An accompanying Justice Department complaint lays out the allegations.
“Google’s anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google’s few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged,” the complaint said.
Per The Daily Wire:
Pelosi, who resigned from her leadership position but remains a member of Congress, sold 10,000 shares of Alphabet Class A stock on December 20, December 21, and December 28, according to federal disclosures, marking a combined transaction value between $1.5 million and $3 million. The disclosures were digitally signed by the lawmaker on January 12.
Pelosi’s most recent trade just ahead of a major lawsuit “adds more fuel to the fire behind her and her husband Paul’s long record of alleged leverage of insider knowledge,” Big League Politics noted at the time.
