Congress is in recess for the holidays — but Nancy Pelosi has kept busy playing the market.
The Democratic majority leader and her husband, Paul Pelosi, recently bought millions of dollars worth of call options for stocks including Google, Salesforce, Roblox and Disney, financial disclosures published Thursday show.
The purchases occurred from Dec. 17 to Dec. 21 — just days after Pelosi insisted in a press conference that members of Congress should be allowed to trade individual stocks despite often being privy to insider information that can move markets.
“We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi told reporters, adding that members of Congress “should be able to participate in that.”
The Pelosi family’s trades this month include Google and Salesforce call options worth between $500,000 and $1 million each, as well as Roblox call options valued at between $100,000 and $250,000. The duo also bought up between $250,000 and $500,000 in calls for chipmaker Micron Technology and between $100,000 and $250,000 of Disney call options in disclosures that were earlier reported by Congresstrading.com.
“The Speaker does not own any stocks,” her deputy chief of staff, Drew Hammill, said in a statement. “As you can see from the required disclosures, with which the Speaker fully cooperates, these transactions are marked ‘SP’ for Spouse. The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
Paul Pelosi runs Financial Leasing Services, a real estate and venture capital investment and consulting firm. In recent years he’s made big-money bets on companies his wife is supposed to regulate, including Amazon, Apple and Google.
December’s calls — which are set to expire in late 2022 and early 2023 — show that the Pelosis believe tech stocks are going to continue their current bull run in the new year, according to Thomas Hayes of Great Hill Capital.
“They’re trying to ride the momentum,” Hayes told The Post. “The Pelosis live in San Francisco — they’re around a lot of hype so I’d see how they’re caught up in the euphoria.”
Some DC insiders have speculated that Pelosi is slow-walking bipartisan legislation that would hurt big tech firms.
Critics on both the left and right have argued that members of Congress should be banned from trading individual stocks and instead only be allowed to invest in broader funds.
Progressives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have slammed members of Congress trading stocks as “brazen” and “ludicrous,” while Republican Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters recently nicknamed Pelosi “Naughty Nancy” and called for a ban on all stock trading by members of Congress.
Under a law called the STOCK Act passed in 2012, members of Congress are required to disclose trades. But 52 members of Congress including Democratic Senators Diane Feinstein of California and Mark Kelly of Arizona, as well as Republican Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Roger Marshall of Kansas have all violated the law in recent years, Insider reported.
Pelosi’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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