Warren Buffett may be considered the greatest investor of our time, but even he can’t touch the prowess of California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). As my colleague Omor Ibne Ehsan recently detailed, over the past decade, Pelosi has generated a cumulative return of 816% from her investments, beating the S&P 500 by a whopping 559 percentage points.
In contrast, the poor Oracle of Omaha has only managed a 282% cumulative return for Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK-A)(NYSE:BRK-B) during that same period — better than the benchmark index, but it’s no contest: Buffett is no Pelosi.
Of course, Pelosi isn’t the only politician with uncanny market timing. In 2024, while the California congresswoman trounced the market again, generating returns in excess of 70% compared to the S&P 500’s 25% — similar to Buffett’s 25.5% total return — she was a real piker among the 535 members of Congress.
According to the site Unusual Whales, which tracks politician trades, Pelosi was only the 10th best congressional investor last year, far behind Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC) with returns of 149%, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) at 142.3%, and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) with 123.8% returns.
In all, five politicians had returns over 100% in 2024.
Of course, the politicians deny trading on inside information obtained from their oversight responsibilities of the companies they regulate. Yet they also refuse to ban stock trading by politicians, no matter how many times a bill to do so is introduced.
If you want to mimic the trades politicians make, Unusual Whales has two exchange-traded funds (ETF): the Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF (NYSEARCA:NANC), to track Democrat politician trades and whose ticker symbol is a cheeky nod to Pelosi, and the Unusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETF (NYSEARCA:KRUZ), which tracks Republican trades. Its ticker is named after Republican Texas senator Ted Cruz, also known for his frequency and timing of trades.
This past summer, though, The Washington Times explored the prescient knack Pelosi has for timing her trades. It detailed how her portfolio — ostensibly managed by her husband Paul Pelosi — sold 5,000 shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) last year just before the Federal Trade Commission launched an antitrust investigation into the tech giant. Pelosi also sold 2,000 shares of Visa (NYSE:V) prior to the Justice Dept. suing the payments processor.
In January, the congresswoman purchased 50 call options with a strike price of $20 of a rather small, unknown artificial intelligence-powered healthcare outfit called Tempus AI (NASDAQ:TEM) — just months before it signed a $200 million deal with AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN).
