Investing

Nancy Pelosi Executes 9 New Stock Trades Leading Into Inauguration Day

Rich Duprey

Published: January 20, 2025 4:33 pm

Congress has an unusual ability to make remarkably well-timed stock trades. Cross their hearts, they are not buying and selling stock based on insider information lifted from the companies they regulate, but politicians still somehow manage to dramatically outperform the S&P 500.

One of the best is former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her ability to perfectly time trades is so renowned that websites are dedicated to tracking her every stock sale and purchase. In 2024, she trounced the S&P 500, generating returns of 71% versus 24.9% for the benchmark index. Not surprisingly, she is opposed to imposing limits on Congress’s ability to trade.

Pelosi just filed her latest Periodic Transaction Report with Congress. It shows she was very active just before Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president.

24/7 Wall St. Insights:

• Congress continues to exhibit an uncanny knack of timing their stock trades to generate unusually exceptional returns.
• Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is one of the best stock traders, and numerous sites follow her trades.
• Pelosi just filed her latest disclosure report showing the stocks she bought and sold over the past two weeks.
• If you’re looking for some stocks with huge potential, make sure to grab a free copy of our brand-new “The Next NVIDIA” report. It features a software stock we’re confident has 10X potential.

Between Dec. 20 and Jan. 17, Pelosi made nine transactions, most of which (seven) were purchases. All of the buys, though, were purchases of stock options. She also made two sales. On Dec. 31, the former Speaker sold 31,600 shares of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock for $7.91 million. That same day she also sold 10,000 shares of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) for $1.34 million.

Her timing was pretty prescient too. While NVDA stock is up 2.5% since the trade, AAPL has tumbled 8.2%.

Most of her trades involved stocks she already owned, including Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW). It’s clear Pelosi remains plugged into the tech sector and the trades totaled in the millions of dollars.

Opening two new positions

Yet she also added two new positions to her portfolio. The first trade Pelosi made was the purchase of 50 call options of energy stock Vistra (NYSE:VST), which had a strike price of $50 and an expiration date of Jan. 16, 2026. The transaction was worth between $500,000 and $1 million.

Shares of Vistra have been racing higher since the start of the year, rising 24% compared to a 2% gain by the S&P 500. While it was one of the largest electricity providers in Texas, its purchase of Energy Harbor last year catapulted it into becoming the country’s second-largest nuclear power generation provider.

The second one was Tempus AI (NASDAQ:TEM), a recently IPO’d healthcare AI stock. Pelosi purchased 50 call options with a strike price of $20 that also expire on Jan. 16, 2026. The value of the trade was between $50,000 and $100,000.

Betting on AI

Arguably the most noteworthy was the Tempus AI trade, if only because the stock went public last June at $37 a share. It went as high as almost $80 a share in November, but has since fallen hard, losing over half its value. It currently trades at just about $35 a stub, meaning she’s getting in at its lowest point.

Investing guru Cathie Wood took a 30,000-share position in TEM in October ahead of earnings and has been continuously buying since. TEM has grown to become the sixth largest position in her ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (NYSEARCA:ARKG) and the ninth biggest position in the ARK Innovation ETF (NYSEARCA:ARKK). She owns a combined 5.43 million shares worth almost $191 million. 

Better than Buffett

Congressional stock trading remains a contentious issue. While the 2012 STOCK Act supposedly prevents politicians from using nonpublic information for personal gain, the outsized performance they achieve suggests otherwise.

While Nancy Pelosi is good, she’s actually not the best. Last year, Rep. David Rouzer, a Republican representative from North Carolina, was tops last year. His portfolio was up 149%, according to an annual portfolio analysis of congressional trades by Unusual Whales.

Perhaps, as the report says, “It’s time for lawmakers to focus on serving the public interest, not their portfolios.”