Despite rampant calls for members of Congress to refrain from active stock market investing while they are in office, members of both political parties remain routinely invested in the markets and remain unmoved by efforts to rein in their speculation.
[NOTE: Two of the most powerful women in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), are often slammed by their opponents for investment portfolios that include companies whose work and prosperity are intertwined with the U.S. government in myriad ways, including through direct federal contracts and regulations. Greene and Pelosi don’t agree on much, but their portfolios both hold shares in some of the same American companies.]
Does their personal financial interest impact their decision-making as legislators? That’s hard to say — or easy to say, but hard to prove.
But can they — from their lofty, powerful positions — protect themselves from risky investments with the insider knowledge they gain from their day jobs?
To judge from the recent investments of Rep. Greene, the answer is probably no. Greene is hardly alone in appearing to take a big portfolio hit this week, as the market soured and left few investors unscathed.
But Greene’s most recent reported stock purchases show increased exposure to some of the hardest hit stocks as markets reacted to the surprise reveal of DeepSeek from China, a cheaper alternative to American efforts like OpenAI in the red hot AI space.
[The emergence of DeepSeek, presented as an AI solution that appears not to require the high-end chips designed by market darling Nvidia and its competitors like Intel and AMD, hollowed out their valuations. Nvidia shed almost $600 billion in market cap, a one-day record.]
Nvidia loses over $589bn in market value following China's DeepSeek’s rise https://t.co/SGmclUKBiv
— DAILY POST 🇳🇬 (@dailypost_ng) January 28, 2025
Greene recently acquired shares in all three of these chipmakers, as well as other impacted high tech juggernauts like Amazon and Alphabet and Meta.
(Section 8 of the STOCK Act of 2012 “requires the Clerk of the House of Representatives to provide online public access to financial disclosure reports filed by Members of Congress and candidates for Congress.)
Seeking Alpha lists Greene’s recent purchases as including: AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), Alphabet (GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Dutch semiconductor equipment firm ASML (NASDAQ:ASML). Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) (BRK.B), Cardinal Health (CAH), Caterpillar (CAT), Devon Energy (DVN), Home Depot (HD), Eli Lilly (LLY), Intel (INTC), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Kinder Morgan (KMI), Meta Platforms (META), NextEra Energy (NEE), Nvidia (NVDA), Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Old Dominion Freight Line (ODFL), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Southern Copper (SCCO), Tesla (TSLA), The Hershey Company (HSY), UPS (UPS) and Visa (V).
Pelosi also reportedly sold and purchased Nvidia (multiple times), as well as Amazon and Alphabet, in recent months.
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