Nancy and Paul Pelosi’s 2022 Stock Market Performance

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and her husband Paul, are regular stock market traders. Given that Pelosi, and others members of Congress, have access to confidential information, the calls for US lawmakers to stop trading individual stocks have increased in recent times.

Concretely, the “Banning Insider Trading in Congress Act” was introduced in the Senate at the beginning of this year. Senator Josh Hawley (Missouri-R) introduced the bill with the aim to prohibit Members of Congress and their spouses from holding or trading individual stocks.

“We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that," Nancy Pelosi said in December last year when asked about lawmakers trading stocks. When she was questioned a few months later, Speaker Pelosi denied that her husband is using confidential information to make trades. 

This blog post takes a glance at the stocks traded by Paul Pelosi this year which were then disclosed under Nancy’s name. The trades listed below predominantly include exercises of call options of several high Market Cap issuers:

• Pelosi's January 21, 2022 filing revealed that she exercised 100 call options - 10,000 shares - of Disney (DIS:US) shares at a strike price of $100 that was set to expire on the same day. These call options were previously purchased on Dec 22, 2020.
• The same disclosure for January also shared a trade of PayPal (PYPL:US) where 50 call options - 5,000 shares - were exercised with an expiry dated January 21, 2022, with a $100 strike price. Pelosi had previously purchased these PYPL call options back on June 24, 2020. 
• On the same date as their expiry, Pelosi exercised the call options of Apple (AAPL:US). At a strike price of $100, these 100 call options (10,000 shares) were previously purchased by her on December 22, 2020.
• At a strike price of $80, 50 call options (5,000 shares) of American Express (AXP:US) were also exercised on the same date as their expiry. These options were previously purchased on June 24, 2020, with a strike price of $80
• Lastly, there was a purchase of 10,000 units of AllianceBernstein Holding LP Units dated January 27, 2022. 

Later in the year, the Californian Democrat came forth with more trades where she exercised previously purchased call options:

• On June 17, 2022 - the same date as their expiry - 200 call options (20,000 shares) of Nvidia Corp (NVDA:US) were exercised at a strike price of $100. Prior to this, Pelosi had purchased both NVDA shares as well as call options on three occasions. Post this exercising trade, she sold 50 call options purchased back on July 23, 2021, with a strike price of $100 on the same date as their expiry: September 16, 2022. 
• On September 16, 2022, 200 call options (20,000 shares) of Alphabet Inc (GOOG:US) were exercised at a strike price of $100 and on the same date as their expiry. These call options, numbering 10, were purchased on December 17, 2021, at a strike price of $2000. The 10 call options were purchased prior to a stock split where GOOG shares were split 20 for 1.

At present, Nancy Pelosi is the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Post the 2022 midterm elections, where Republicans gained the majority of the House, Pelosi stepped down from her role as both speaker and leader of the House Democratic Caucus, but as yet would continue to remain as a House Member.