Source: Zero Hedge
In news that should be hilarious, but instead drips of hypocrisy and general bemusement about the laughing stock our markets have become, Tik Tok investors are now literally taking their stock picking cues from Nancy Pelosi.
By now, everyone knows that Nancy Pelosi and her husband have made some “conveniently” timed purchases of stocks like Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. At the least, the Pelosi family are far more active traders than the average U.S. household. At worst, it appears the family could be using the Speaker’s access to non-public information to benefit personally.
Regardless of what the objective truth is, traders have seen enough to leave them convinced that Pelosi “has an in” when it comes to investing and, in turn, have dedicated their stock picking “due diligence” to examining what stocks the Pelosi household is buying at the time.
“Shouts out to Nancy Pelosi, the stock market’s biggest whale,” one user on Tik Tok said, according to a report by NPR.
“I’ve come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi is a psychic,” another said.
Chris Josephs, co-founder of a company called Iris, which shows other people’s stock trades, said of Pelosi’s trading record: “She knew. And you would have known if you had followed her portfolio.”
Josephs has been using the Stock Act, which mandates that lawmakers disclose stock trades and those of their spouses within 45 days, to send out push notifications to his platform every time Pelosi’s disclosures are updated.
“I’m at the point where if you can’t beat them, join them. I typically do buy… the next one she does, I’m going to buy,” Josephs told NPR.
“We don’t want this to … be a left vs. right thing. We don’t really care. We just want to make money,” he continued.
Tim Carambat, who put together two public databases of financial transactions from lawmakers, said there’s been large demand for his work. He told NPR: “I knocked out a very, very simple version of the project in like a couple of hours. And I posted it actually to Reddit, where it gained some significant traction and people showed a lot of interest in it.”
“Investors perceive that senators may have insider information. And we see abnormal positive returns when there’s a disclosure by a senator,” added Dinesh Hasija, an assistant professor of strategic management at Augusta University.
We think Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center put it best, however: “If the situation is that the public has lost so much trust in government that they think … the stock trades of members are based on corruption, and that [following that] corruption could benefit [them]. … We have a significant problem.”
“The Speaker has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions,” Pelosi’s spokesperson said of her husband’s trading.
