Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Buys Stock Options in Apple and Microsoft
Nancy Pelosi’s investments—and those of her husband, Paul—are a matter of public record. Paul has bought call options for Apple and Microsoft.
June 16 2022, Updated 3:08 a.m. ET
As U.S. representatives and other lawmakers are required to disclose their securities trades, naturally, there’s a lot of interest around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif) investments.
In 2021, Pelosi disclosed her husband’s investments in a financial disclosure form called a periodic transaction report on Jan. 21, as required by the STOCK Act, or the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012. The act aims “to prohibit Members of Congress and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit, and for other purposes.”
What stocks does Nancy Pelosi hold?
While Nancy Pelosi isn't one to invest her money in stocks or call options, her husband is. The financial disclosure released in 2021 revealed her husband, Paul Pelosi, had made multiple stock or call option purchases on Dec. 22, 2020.
The companies he invested in include AllianceBernstein (NYSE: AB), Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA), Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), and the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS). The four purchases each fell in the $500,001–$1,000,000 range.
Paul purchased stock in investment management company AllianceBernstein, and call options for the other three companies. Call options give investors the right to purchase shares at a predetermined price, a “strike price,” within a given timeframe, and one call option typically represents 100 shares.
For AllianceBernstein, Paul purchased 20,000 shares. For Tesla, he purchased 25 call options with a strike price of $500 and an expiration date of March 18, 2020, which means he could have bought 2,500 Tesla shares at $500 per share any time before that date.
For Apple, he purchased 100 call options with a strike price of $100 and an expiration date of Jan. 21, 2022. And for Disney, he purchased 100 call options with a strike price of $100 and an expiration date of Jan. 21, 2022.
An April 2020 periodic transaction report, meanwhile, revealed that Paul had also bought 10,000 shares of Slack Technologies (NYSE: WORK) and call options for Alphabet Class A (Nasdaq: GOOGL) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) that February.
Fast forward to 2022, and the Pelosis now have purchased "up to $2.1 million worth of Apple and Microsoft stock options," reports Business Insider. The purchases were reportedly made in May 2022 for the following amounts:
- Between $750,000 and $1.5 million in Apple stock options.
- Between $300,000 and $600,000 in Microsoft stock options.
What does it mean that Nancy Pelosi’s husband invested in Tesla?
Paul’s investment in Tesla, while legal, means the Pelosis could financially benefit from the success of Tesla; and as Speaker of the House, Pelosi could help steer U.S. green energy policy, as the Associated Press reports in a fact-checking article.
Viral social media posts have claimed that the Pelosis are engaging in insider trading, but those posts tend to distort the facts. One such post, for example, links the Pelosis’ Tesla investment to Joe Biden’s stated plan to replace the federal government’s “enormous fleet of vehicles” with “clean electric vehicles made right here in America, by American workers.”
“1/24/21 Nancy buys $1.25 million in Tesla Stock…” the post reads. “1/25/21 Joe signs EO for all Fed Vehicles to be EV!” In another version of the post, a social media user wrote, “Wow! What are the odds of that? Talk about luck!” And in response, reports the Associated Press, one Facebook user wrote, “Imagine that! Isn’t this called insider trading?”
But the post gets the date and the amount of the investment incorrect: Paul made the call option purchase on Dec. 22 for between $500,000 and $1 million.
