Chris Jospehs, the 29-year-old behind an X account called “Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker,” told Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson on a podcast Wednesday that Pelosi’s husband’s purchase of Tesla “LEAPS” sparked national interest in Pelosi’s trading.
In 2020, Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi began to gain attention as reports surfaced about their net worth and Paul’s trading activities. Paul, who owns and operates a venture capital investment and consulting firm, became a focal point. On “The Tucker Carlson Show,” Carlson asked Josephs how he discovered that Pelosi was “particularly successful” in her trading, as her earnings amassed millions.
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“So, Pelosi gets a lot of headlines for obvious reasons. One, millions, [she] massively outweighs what the other politicians are trading. I’m talking like she’s trading 50 million to 60 million while everyone else is trading smaller amounts,” Jospehs said.
“When she got married to Paul, they were worth around $20 million. Their net worth now is around $260 million. So you’re 10 X-ing that. How?” Josephs asked. “She’s been a career-long politician making 175K. Her husband’s very, very successful in stocks, particularly tech stocks. It all started with her in 2020 when she bought Tesla.”
In 2021, Pelosi advocated for and defended lawmakers and their spouses’ right to participate in the stock market. The California Democrat said that, as part of a “free-market economy,” lawmakers — at least 75 of whom had invested their own money into companies key to the U.S. COVID response — should be allowed to participate in it.
“This is when I personally started paying attention. Then there’s, you look back and it’s like, ‘Holy shit, this has been going on forever,’” Josephs said. “2020 comes around, COVID, so people already necessarily know about her. She now starts trading stocks again, and it’s beginning, blown up on social media because while everyone’s with COVID, what are they doing?”
“They’re on social media, and they’re trading stocks. So now everyone’s acutely watching these things and paying attention. At the end of 2020, right after Biden got elected, she went and bought up to $5 million of Tesla calls,” Josephs said. “She’s not just buying stock. Well, her husband’s not just buying, she’s buying these things called LEAPS.”
Josephs explained that LEAPS, also known as Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities, is an “options contract that allows you to buy a stock and be bullish on a stock at a much cheaper cost basis.”
“So instead of you needing $5 million to buy X amount of quote unquote risk in a stock for it to go up, you can actually take that $5 million and buy a LEAP. It gives you a broader Delta so that you can make more money, essentially higher risk, high reward,” Josephs said.
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“So she goes, and she’s buying these leaps,” Josephs added. “Biden’s first few weeks in office, he introduces the Build Back Better — 1.3, 2.3, whatever massive infrastructure bill. Part of that bill had tons of not only subsidies for the electric vehicle industry, but also money to build out and invest for the charging ports for electric vehicles. Cause you know, you can’t just tell people to go buy electric cars. You need to have the infrastructure.”
According to Business Insider, Paul purchased 25 Tesla call options on Dec. 22, 2020, with a “strike price” of $500, making their value somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million. The move came just weeks before former President Joe Biden unveiled his electric vehicle plan, which aimed to replace the U.S. federal fleet of gas-powered vehicles with EVs.
However, it wasn’t the only time Paul succeeded in his trades. He also bet on Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., and Apple Inc. stock in 2021, just weeks before the House Judiciary Committee voted on antitrust legislation limiting how the companies organize and offer their products, according to Bloomberg. Financial disclosures signed by Pelosi showed that Paul exercised call options to acquire 4,000 shares of Alphabet at a strike price of $1,200. The lawmaker’s husband made a gain of $4.8 million, which reportedly rose to $5.3 million as the shares jumped.
“So when you start following the timeline on it, it’s like, OK, Biden gets elected. She buys up to $5 million of LEAPS, which are very risky in Tesla,” Josephs said. “That agenda then comes out. The stock flies 50%. So it’s not like she’s actually buying things that the public wouldn’t necessarily know about, but she’s buying things in a high risky way with a ton of money in ways that the public now is paying attention to because everyone’s stocks, and they’re watching Tesla [and] Elon.”
“That was the first trade that I think re-triggered everyone’s mind until like, ‘Wait a second, this may not be the sketchiest trade in the world because those things were still public, but how are they allowed to necessarily do that?’ How is Pelosi, the third most powerful person in America … how are we allowing that?” Josephs asked. “I think like the culmination of those different intersections is why this started getting big and why people started paying attention specifically to Pelosi.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.