Nancy Pelosi, the Capitol Hill pioneer who triumphs on Wall Street

The first woman to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives has made successful investments in Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia, boosting her net worth to $259 million.

"Some of you are here to make a good pâté, but most of the time we make sausage," Nancy Pelosi told the younger generation of the Democratic Party a few years ago. In other words, she asked them not to be naive.

Few voices can speak with greater authority on American politics than this Baltimore-born congresswoman, who has repeatedly broken the glass ceiling faced by dozens of women throughout the more than 200-year history of democracy in the world's leading power.

In 2002, she became the first female leader of a party in Congress, taking over the Democratic minority. Five years later, she was the first of her gender to serve as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

At the same time, his work in the halls of Capitol Hill has been instrumental during both Democratic presidencies this century. Under Barack Obama, he pushed through healthcare and financial reform, while under Joe Biden, he secured the necessary support to advance subsidies for chip manufacturing and clean energy.

Along with a long political career, Pelosi is one of the congresswomen who moves her money best on the stock exchange. The stock portfolio she shares with her husband, Paul Pelosi, has accumulated a 690% appreciation since May 2014, according to information she is required to file as a result of her public office. This figure represents a return almost 3.5 times greater than that offered by the S&P 500 over the same period.

His estimated net worth is $260 million. This includes the San Francisco mansion where he lives, valued at up to $20 million, and a vineyard in St. Helena, valued at between $5 million and $25 million.

Pelosi's reputation as a Wall Street guru has not gone unnoticed by investors and internet users. A Twitter account was created in June 2022 to track all the congresswoman's portfolio moves. It currently has more than one million followers.

Last year, Pelosi's stakes in tech giants like Nvidia and Alphabet appreciated 70.9%, according to Unusual Whales, which tracks the returns achieved by American politicians' investments. The chipmaker was the stock with the largest weighting in her portfolio (20%), followed by Google's parent company (14%), the energy company Vistra (11%), Amazon, and Palo Alto (both 10%). Apple, American Express, Micron Technology, Tesla, Roblox, and Salesforce have also been among her investments in the past.

The stock market success of Pelosi and other public officials has not been without controversy, as there is always the suspicion that some might profit by exploiting privileged information.

In 2022, the possibility of banning stock trading by members of the Senate and House of Representatives gained traction, prompting a change of heart among Democratic Party politicians. Initially, they opposed it, arguing that "we are a free market economy," but a few months later, they stated that they were "okay" with tightening regulations. Perhaps this was one of those times when, to borrow their favorite culinary analogy, they had to make pâté instead of sausage.