‘Wolf of Wall Street’ J. Belfort shares his take on Nancy Pelosi’s stock bets

Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker known as the “Wolf of Wall Street,” recently shared his opinions on the stock market activities of several U.S. politicians. 

He opined that Representative Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of Congress, must be trading using non-public information when asked if he believes she is a stock-picking genius in a December 29, 2023 interview with Tucker Carlson on X.

According to Belfort, this fact makes the Representative a criminal. Still, he stated that he believes that in the current climate, people in power, especially the members of the Democratic party, are allowed to operate with impunity and that the media is largely silent on the issue.

Nancy Pelosi has been under great scrutiny for years due to what appears to be an uncanny ability to make lucrative and well-timed trades that many consider to be an indicator that she is operating using information available only due to her position in the U.S. government. 

Indeed, by the start of December 2023, the investments, managed by the Representative’s husband – Paul Pelosi – outperformed the S&P 500 index 2.5 times when it comes to returns.

Pelosi’s portfolio, as examined by Finbold, recorded significant gains throughout 2023. Most of the Representative’s major investments – including those in companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) performed extremely well last year.

This trend for success is further corroborated by the performance of a bot designed by the alternative trading platform Quiver Quantitative, which copies Pelosi’s investments and has been up as much as 48% in a year, per the data collected on December 18, 2023.

Suspicious trades rampant among U.S. officials

While Nancy Pelosi is the most famous successful trader among elected officials, she is far from the only one. Throughout 2023, there have been numerous highly suspicious investments made by multiple members of both the Senate and Congress. 

Some of the standout examples include the acquisition of gambling stocks by the Chair of the House Ethics Committee and the lucrative investments in small-cap health stocks – Tactile Systems (NASDAQ: TCDM) and Artivion (NASDAQ: AORTH) – made by a member of the Senate Committee on Health.

The many suspicious trades have renewed the drive to pass a law that would prevent elected officials from directly engaging with the market, instead forcing them to either divest or place their assets in blind trusts.

The “Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act” has been in the works for years, but a vote has been promised and postponed on multiple occasions – including by Nancy Pelosi – and the “Ban Stock Trading for Government Officials Act” has been introduced relatively recently and has been gaining steam in the closing months of 2023.