Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who officially announced her retirement from the House this past week, and her husband Paul have amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune in the years since she took office.
They turned their early stock holdings into more than $130 million over the past 37 years for a return of nearly 17,000%, according to a new report.
That growth, Republican critics say, underscores the need for tougher congressional ethics laws, The New York Post reported on Saturday.
“Nancy Pelosi’s true legacy is becoming the most successful insider trader in American history,” said RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels.
“If anyone else had turned $785,000 into $133.7 million with better returns than Warren Buffett, they’d be retiring behind bars,” she added.
When Pelosi, 85, first came to Congress in 1987, she and her husband reported between $610,000 and $785,000 in stock holdings, a financial disclosure at the time shows.
This included investments in a dozen companies like Citibank, along with many others that are no longer traded publicly.
But now, according to an analysis from Quiver Quantitative, as of Saturday, the stock portfolio was valued at $133.7 million, with a net worth estimated at nearly $280 million.
This gain far outpaced the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s 2,300% rise over the same period, and the Pelosis’ average annual return of about 14.5% also beats long-term performances of major indexes, including the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
In 2024 alone, their investments reportedly gained 54%, more than doubling the S&P 500’s 25% rise and topping many hedge funds, Bloomberg reported.
Pelosi’s latest financial disclosure lists roughly two dozen individual stock holdings, including major stakes in Apple, NVIDIA, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, and Netflix. The Apple position alone is valued between $25 million and $50 million.
Dan Weiskopf, portfolio manager of the congressional-tracking ETF NANC, said Pelosi’s trades reflect “high conviction and aggressive” strategy, often involving options trading for leverage.
“You only do that when you have a lot of confidence,” he said. “We don’t see her panic or flip-flop on positions.”
The couple’s holdings also include real estate and business ventures, including a Napa Valley winery worth up to $25 million, a San Francisco restaurant, commercial properties, and a political data firm.
They own homes in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights and Washington’s Georgetown.
Pelosi’s exit comes as Congress again weighs banning members and their spouses from trading individual stocks, a move advocates say would prevent lawmakers from profiting on nonpublic information.
Earlier versions of the bill were nicknamed after Pelosi, and even exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have tracked her trades.
Paul Pelosi, a successful venture capitalist and serial investor, who reportedly works on the couple’s investments, has made tens of millions of dollars in stock and option trades, involving about 20 companies.
One notable trade came in late 2023, when the Pelosis reportedly spent about $2.4 million to exercise call options on 50,000 shares of NVIDIA at $12 each — less than a tenth of the stock’s current price — creating paper profits of more than $7 million.
The timing of the investment sparked criticism because it came just before the Senate voted on a $52 billion measure aimed at boosting U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, reports Business Insider.
Lawmakers pushing to ban individual stock trading by members of Congress and their spouses say the purchase underscores concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Pelosi has denied that her husband has made trades based on information she has given him.
Weiskopf commented, “when you’re supposed to be called an honorable member of Congress, maybe you should look yourself in the mirror and say, I want to do the right thing.”
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