(PresidentialWire.com)- The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cashed in on some big wins on tech stocks just a few days before votes on antitrust legislation.
A Bloomberg report recently revealed that Paul Pelosi exercised call options so he could acquire 4,000 shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. The price of the strike was $1,200. That trade alone gained him $4.8 million at the time, and the shares rose to $5.3 million since that time.
All of this was included in a financial disclosure the House Speaker herself signed on July 2. That was only one week before the House Judiciary Committee worked on six different antitrust bills. Four of those are focused on Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple.
Despite the scary sound of the bills, investors didn’t seem to think they’d have long-term negative effects on the companies. Since the legislation was approved by the committee, the share price for Alphabet has jumped up 3.2%.
That’s not all Paul Pelosi cashed in on, though. On May 21, he bought 20 call options on Amazon. The strike price was $3,000, and they expire in June of next year. This is a bet that he believes that Amazon’s stock price will continue to increase over the next year.
In addition, Paul also purchased 50 call options on Apple. Those have the same June 2022 expiration date as his Amazon options, and the strike price was $100.
Drew Hammill, a spokesman for the House Speaker, said that Nancy Pelosi doesn’t own stock on her own, just her husband does. He also emailed a short statement that said:
“The speaker has no involvement or prior knowledge of these transactions.”
It’s a little hard to believe, though, that Nancy Pelosi would know nothing of what her husband is doing. There’s nothing technically illegal that Paul Pelosi is doing, but he does have some close knowledge of what’s going on in the House.
To this point, Paul is not suspected of breaking any laws himself or those related to members of Congress and their spouses, including insider trading.
Last month, the House Speaker said she supported antitrust legislation moving forward in an effort to challenge big tech companies’ hold over the digital economy. She said Congress is “not going to ignore the consolidation that has happened and the concern that exists on both sides of the aisle.”
The legislation that came out of the House Judiciary Committee was bipartisan.
Even still, the legislation still has a lot of work to go through before it can become law. The House hasn’t even voted on it yet, and it would face a potentially tougher challenge over in the Senate.
All members of the House must file disclosure reports within 30 days they become aware of a transaction like this. House guidelines also give House members the option to file the disclosure within 45 days after the transaction officially took place.
