Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Buys Call Options for Tesla Stock, Raising Eyebrows
By Dan ClarendonFeb. 14 2021, Updated 10:00 a.m. ET
United States representatives and other lawmakers are required to disclose their securities trades, so naturally, there’s a lot of interest around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif) investments.
Pelosi disclosed her husband’s recent 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 of 2012, an act “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?
The report revealed four new filings from purchases that Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband, made on Dec. 22 for stock or call options in AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. (NYSE: AB), Tesla Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA), Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), and the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS). The four purchases each fell in the $500,001–$1,000,000 prince range.
Paul purchased stock in AllianceBernstein, an investment management firm, and call options for the other three companies. Call options allow 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 the 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, meaning he can buy 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, reveals that Paul bought 10,000 shares of Slack Technologies Inc. (NYSE: WORK) and call options for Alphabet Inc. Class A (Nasdaq: GOOGL) and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) that February.
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 President 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, per the AP, 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 a price between $500,000 and $1 million.
