The debate over congressional stock trading is intensifying amid renewed suspicions of plugged-in politicians acting on insider information to make timely trades.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)’s announcement last week that he supports a ban on members of Congress trading stocks gave new life to a perennial debate over whether stock holdings conflict with legislative work in Washington, D.C., especially when an elected official has a financial interest in a sector they oversee.
According to congressional trading data compiled by Quiver Quantitative, the five most active traders in Congress last year were Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), with 526 trades and at least $91 million in trade volume; Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), with 17 trades of $37.75 million; Scott Franklin (R-FL), with 69 trades of $6 million; Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), with 202 trades of $5.5 million; and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), with 71 trades of $4.4 million.
Pelosi, originally an outspoken opponent of a ban prohibiting members of Congress and their families from trading stock, has profited significantly from her husband’s investments, venture capitalist Paul Pelosi. In statements to the press, the former House speaker maintains that she “does not own any stocks” and “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions.”
FIVE TIMES HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI HAD TO ANSWER FOR PAUL PELOSI’S STOCK TRADES
According to a periodic transaction report Nancy submitted earlier this year, Paul is already making major moves in the market.
On the last trading day of 2024, he sold 31,600 shares of Apple common stock for between $5 million and $25 million. That day, Paul Pelosi also sold 10,000 shares of Nvidia common stock in the range of $1 million to $5 million. In January, he acquired 50 call options with a strike price of $150 in Amazon and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, respectively. Both purchases were worth between $250,000 and $500,000.
These transactions and others committed by Nancy Pelosi’s husband have fueled questions over whether they are simply market-savvy maneuvers or if the trades were based on access to confidential information.
Paul previously scored big in July by selling 2,000 shares of Visa valued at between $500,000 and $1 million, less than three months before the credit card company was hit with federal antitrust charges. When he sold the stock, there was no indication, at least publicly, that an antitrust lawsuit against Visa was forthcoming.
In 2024, however, Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC) earned more than even Pelosi. His stock portfolio reportedly outperformed all other lawmakers on Capitol Hill by posting the greatest gains, 149%, mainly because of Nvidia, Mastercard, and Visa shares, among other notable names, he had bought years ago.
Today, he is not an active trader nor has he “purchased or sold a single stock asset since 2022,” Rouzer’s chief of staff Anna McCormack told the Hill. “After all, we’re talking about a guy who drives a 2004 Tahoe with 585,000 miles on it,” McCormack added.
Rouzer’s last financial disclosure statement was submitted for the 2023 filing year.
Meanwhile, more active congressional traders have heavily invested in the very industries they are tasked with regulating, raising ethical concerns over whether their respective committee assignments, which make them privy to non-public information such as military intelligence and trade secrets, provide an unfair competitive edge.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), whose portfolio posted the second-largest return after Rouzer last year, recently purchased shares in the satellite operator Viasat, a U.S. military contractor, while acting as ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on military construction.
Viasat, which has been awarded over $5 billion in federal contracts, mostly from the Department of Defense, according to government contract data, was just selected by NASA for a $4.8 billion network services contract. When Schultz made the trade in October, the price of a Viasat share was steadily falling. It surged at the end of January, thanks in part to the NASA announcement, though it has tapered off since.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security, reported a purchase of stock in the defense contractor RTX, formerly known as Raytheon, days before Congress passed a series of foreign military aid bills totaling $95 billion. Newhouse voted yes on each of them. The price of RTX stock has been up ever since.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), who currently serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, repeatedly purchased shares in weapons maker Lockheed Martin as recently as November.
A month later, Lockheed Martin was awarded an $11.8 billion Defense Department contract to continue production of the F-35 fighter jet. In July, the day after Moskowitz bought more stock, the Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $520 million contract modification for “Foreign Military Sales Block 70/72 F-16 Viper Shield electronic warfare suite production.”
Gottheimer, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, has purchased and sold shares in the credit rating service Fair Isaac Corporation. Last year, former Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) reported that his spouse purchased shares of Arcadium Lithium, the world’s third-largest producer of lithium, and invested in two Big Oil companies, Valero Energy and TotalEnergies, while he sat on the Senate Finance energy, natural resources, and infrastructure subcommittee.
Stock ownership in Congress is common. In the last congressional session, only 5% of U.S. representatives and senators combined did not own stock or widely-held investment funds, per Campaign Legal Center. Out of the nearly half (46%) who did own stock, 59% were Republicans and 41% were Democrats.
Party performance-wise, last year, the portfolios of Democratic and Republican lawmakers on average beat the S&P 500, up 24.9%, according to stock-trading watchdog Unusual Whales.
The group’s 2024 Congress trading report, which examined how congressional portfolios performed against market benchmarks, found that Democrats had a higher weighted percent change, 31%, overall due to their Big Tech holdings compared to Republicans at 26%.
CONGRESSIONAL STOCK TRADING IS CORRUPT
Of the stocks lawmakers love to trade the most, Microsoft is the top actively traded stock, with almost 350 trades and more than $50 million in transactional value over the past three years, Capitol Trades reported in early May. Apple follows with $38 million, and Nvidia comes in closely behind with $36 billion. Shares in Nvidia, a major chip manufacturer, were notably bought and sold by congressional traders as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act, which subsidizes the U.S. semiconductor industry, moved through Congress.
They weren’t one-off purchases, either. Capitol Trades found that politicians actively traded these stocks, switching between buying and selling over time. For example, Microsoft saw 134 buys and 212 sells, suggesting lawmakers often use short-term trading strategies instead of long-term investments. This pattern of portfolio management matches the level of aggressiveness typically reserved for seasoned Wall Street fund managers, according to Capitol Trades.