House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday offered a strong denial when she was asked by a reporter if her husband has ever made a stock purchase or sale based on information received from her.
“No, absolutely not,” the California Democrat said, after getting the question about Paul Pelosi’s trades during her weekly press conference.
Paul Pelosi, a businessman and private investor, has often generated headlines for his trades, including his recent big bet on chip and software company Nvidia NVDA, +0.51%, which comes as Congress looks poised to approve $ 52 billion in subsidies for the U.S. semiconductor SMH, +1.05% SOXX, +1.05% industry.
Thanks to his trades, Nancy Pelosi ranked as the eighth-biggest trader last year among Congress’s more than 500 members, with $ 12 million in buys and no sells. That’s according to a MarketWatch report in January that used a Capitol Trades analysis of disclosures filed by members of Congress for their trading activity or for their family members’ buys and sells.
Some Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been pushing for a ban on congressional buying and selling of individual stocks, but time is running out for this effort as Congress soon will take its August recess and then focus primarily on November’s midterm elections.
See: It’s crunch time for the push to ban Congress from trading stocks