5 ms·

Ehh, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers consistently year over year. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_t

Ehh, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers consistently year over year. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi

aborochoff 5y ago
This looks to me to be just for 2020. Is there more analysis somewhere showing it’s consistent?
cronix 5y ago
* Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Not saying she didn't give him info, but she didn't do the actual trades. He's an investment manager. > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi-husband-buys-millions-4-mega-cap-tech-stocks-2021-7?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi...
- qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
  He has magical superpowers and just happens to be the husband of a policy maker that drives trillions in government spending.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    Roughly 9 out of 10 hedge funds fail to beat the market or simple passive strategies indexed to it. I'm no fan of Pelosi personally, but observing her husbands performance isn't smoking gun evidence, it's just banal. Also, consider that a lot of what hedge funds offer is bespoke risk profiles to high net wealth individuals that are overexposed to particular market sectors.
    - the_optimist 5y ago
      This is wrong on all levels. Banality and evidence don’t sit across a spectrum. Hedge funds largely don’t offer sector exposure for balancing purposes in the general, and neither in this specific case. Paul Pelosi runs a diversified investment portfolio, not a hedge fund.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I think this has probably been one of the worst times to compared hedge fund performance to other strategies. Let's see if the corrections happen for real and then calculate those returns. After all market was or is at all time high.
      - hogFeast 5y ago
        We have already seen it. In 2020, you saw macro funds (the ones often targeted for "underperforming") that were running max drawdowns of 5% make 20%, 30%, 40% in a few months. The issue, as you imply, is that in a bull market people lose almost all ability to exercise reason and view the opportunity cost of capital as the S&P. But a lot of hedge funds aren't running high levels of beta, and investors in their funds don't demand that (unf for some hedge funds, who demanded low vol and then went into index funds when beta did well). And, ofc, most equity hedge funds have had very strong performance. All the Tiger group hedge funds have private companies, everyone owns tech companies, you are even seeing value hedge funds in FAANG stocks...it is quite something.
    - smaryjerry 5y ago
      I don’t think anyone ever claimed a smoking gun here. As the article says they were investigated but not charged.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    After skimming the link, what is the conflict of interest here? He benefits if Apple and Amazon go up. So does everybody who owns an S&P 500 fund. Does this mean that Pelosi has an incentive not to be too harsh in regulating the tech giants? Is that a big problem? Or was the timing based on an insider's knowledge of when there would be publicity about regulations and when it would die down?
    - Consultant32452 5y ago
      Stocks confer ownership. Is she spending government money at a company that she is a partial owner of?
      - perl4ever 5y ago
        Would that be an issue if it was owned through an S&P 500 fund? I would agree that options look suspicious, even if they are not "short dated out of the money" types. But mega cap stocks are lot harder to manipulate than some tiny obscure company. I think I read that Barack Obama put all his savings into government bonds while he was in office, which is admirable and maybe it would be good to mandate high level people all do that. But if we don't have such a law, it doesn't seem too far out if they own the same big companies that almost everyone who invests in the stock market does. Before accusing Mr. Pelosi, at a minimum, I think it would be relevant to check how much different his investment returns were from an index of the entire stock market. I think there have been Republicans that were overzealously accused of insider trading during the beginning of the pandemic too. I forget who, but there was a fuss made about several of them and Matthew Levine dissected some of the claims in his column and didn't think there was much there.
        Consultant32452 5y ago
        The returns don't matter. The conflict of interest matters. If you commit insider trading but wind up losing money you are just a sucky criminal. Blind trust is the only acceptable option. It's been tradition for Presidents through most of my lifetime. Trump didn't do it and it was rightfully a big shit storm.
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Maybe. Or maybe by nature of his relationship he gets approached more for interesting opportunities? Is Dr Dre an amazing talent scout, or was he out and about and by nature of his own fame approached by artists such that he could pick the obvious good opportunitie? Or maybe both apply? Perhaps having money, power or fame is an attractor of opportunities all on its own. It doesn't have to be that, but "better than average consistently" doesn't mean much to me when the person is already not average in a few other aspects.
    - mieses 5y ago
      He would also be approached more often with poor investing opportunities.
      - eurasiantiger 5y ago
        Much more, in fact, considering the level of scam spam any retail investor receives.
      - kbenson 5y ago
        That only really matters if you think he can't see good from bad at all. Even if he just ignored most and only acted on things that looked phenomenal, he might see more of those than the average person.
  - NicoJuicy 5y ago
    Paul Pelosi helped launch his wife's political career. Not the other way around. Just look at timelines of careers. Paul was already very successful before her career, not since. Nancy could do unpaid work in the Democratic party because of Paul's success ( 70-80's), which helped her career a lot.
  - mercy_dude 5y ago
    Yeah every time someone comes defending this despicable human being who had got filthy rich in last 40yrs saying it is her husband, I just shake my head and ask when are these people going to retire? How much is enough for these people?
    - cronix 5y ago
      No defense was given. I was simply correcting an incorrect statement the way it was written to make it factually accurate. I also predicated it with > Not saying she didn't give him info
  - hardolaf 5y ago
    Ah yes. The classic mega insider trading of... buying Apple stock. Yes, only the most non-obvious and insiderest trading ever imagine. Next you're going to accuse me of "insider trading" for moving all of my assets into the ARKG when it became clear COVID-19 was going to be declared a pandemic.
- nl 5y ago
  > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. Doesn't every diversified fund in the world own "mega-cap tech stocks"? And most probably bought during May and June because their increased value meant they took a larger proportion of indexes, and index-following is a pretty widely used strategy.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  As a non-American, how is this legal? I was under the impression that financial trading is highly regulated in the US. I mean the possibility of her not giving insider info to her husband is very slim to none imo.
  - m0zg 5y ago
    Rhetorical question to be sure. Guess who controls what's "legal".
  - krageon 5y ago
    In the US, when you have a lot of money you are above the law.
    - throwawayswede 5y ago
      I get that, but in this case it seems like the opposite. If you have the law then you have a lot of money.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  You don’t even need to know insider information about companies to make smart decisions if you a family member of Congress especially the leader of the entire Democratic Party, which currently controls the house, senate, and presidency. You only need to know what laws are likely to get passed in advance and consider how that will effect companies. Helps to have the person who leads and publicly threatens other democrats for their vote on items.
lostcolony 5y ago
Yeah, but take the random trades of 435 people and a normal distribution is still going to have a top (and bottom!) outlier. It's certainly reasonable to assume an investment manager (her husband, who is making most of the trades) might be part of the reason to be such an outlier. And even discounting that and looking for shenanigans, well..."she timed buying NFLX almost perfectly" with a purchase a month before it was announced they were going into the video game space; why the heck would she have known that? That isn't related to legislation, that isn't something they would have gone to the government for; that would be a purely business decision by Netflix. How the heck would she know about it?
- hanniabu 5y ago
  > why the heck would she have known that? That isn't related to legislation Who knows, maybe insider info they can trade on is a form of bribery and getting a congressman's ear.
- emkoemko 5y ago
  how about people in these positions shouldn't be trading... if i was in power i would think people would assume i am corrupt if i did trade.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    I mean, I'd be all for politicians having to put any investment money into blind trusts, sure. But that's different than saying they're insider trading.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      They have insiders knowledge and they are trading on that. It is legal insider trading.
      - danuker 5y ago
        Why is it legal?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Galanwe 5y ago
Returns alone mean nothing to evaluate an investment strategy against an other. At the _very_ least you would need to compare with the same level of volatility.
kesselvon 5y ago
Yeah, most hedge fund managers are also absolute trash though.
caublestone 5y ago
Paul Pelosi acted on insider info back in 07. I’ve wonder what his position in the market was when Henry Paulson was on his knees begging her to TARP. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-insidertrading-idUSTRE81700720120208 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-insidertradi... https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/09/26/hank-paulson-kneeling-before-pelosi https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/09/...
- drited 5y ago
  That Reuters article you referenced does not say that he traded on insider information. It says that Paul Pelosi may have gotten access to an IPO based on Nancy's position (although that is disputed by Pelosi who says that access was applied for in the standard manner through his broker). That's very different from insider trading.

Ehh, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers consistently year over year. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi

aborochoff 5y ago

This looks to me to be just for 2020. Is there more analysis somewhere showing it’s consistent?

cronix 5y ago

* Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Not saying she didn't give him info, but she didn't do the actual trades. He's an investment manager. > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi-husband-buys-millions-4-mega-cap-tech-stocks-2021-7?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi...

qwertyuiop_ 5y ago
He has magical superpowers and just happens to be the husband of a policy maker that drives trillions in government spending.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
  Roughly 9 out of 10 hedge funds fail to beat the market or simple passive strategies indexed to it. I'm no fan of Pelosi personally, but observing her husbands performance isn't smoking gun evidence, it's just banal. Also, consider that a lot of what hedge funds offer is bespoke risk profiles to high net wealth individuals that are overexposed to particular market sectors.
  - the_optimist 5y ago
    This is wrong on all levels. Banality and evidence don’t sit across a spectrum. Hedge funds largely don’t offer sector exposure for balancing purposes in the general, and neither in this specific case. Paul Pelosi runs a diversified investment portfolio, not a hedge fund.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I think this has probably been one of the worst times to compared hedge fund performance to other strategies. Let's see if the corrections happen for real and then calculate those returns. After all market was or is at all time high.
    - hogFeast 5y ago
      We have already seen it. In 2020, you saw macro funds (the ones often targeted for "underperforming") that were running max drawdowns of 5% make 20%, 30%, 40% in a few months. The issue, as you imply, is that in a bull market people lose almost all ability to exercise reason and view the opportunity cost of capital as the S&P. But a lot of hedge funds aren't running high levels of beta, and investors in their funds don't demand that (unf for some hedge funds, who demanded low vol and then went into index funds when beta did well). And, ofc, most equity hedge funds have had very strong performance. All the Tiger group hedge funds have private companies, everyone owns tech companies, you are even seeing value hedge funds in FAANG stocks...it is quite something.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    I don’t think anyone ever claimed a smoking gun here. As the article says they were investigated but not charged.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  After skimming the link, what is the conflict of interest here? He benefits if Apple and Amazon go up. So does everybody who owns an S&P 500 fund. Does this mean that Pelosi has an incentive not to be too harsh in regulating the tech giants? Is that a big problem? Or was the timing based on an insider's knowledge of when there would be publicity about regulations and when it would die down?
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    Stocks confer ownership. Is she spending government money at a company that she is a partial owner of?
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      Would that be an issue if it was owned through an S&P 500 fund? I would agree that options look suspicious, even if they are not "short dated out of the money" types. But mega cap stocks are lot harder to manipulate than some tiny obscure company. I think I read that Barack Obama put all his savings into government bonds while he was in office, which is admirable and maybe it would be good to mandate high level people all do that. But if we don't have such a law, it doesn't seem too far out if they own the same big companies that almost everyone who invests in the stock market does. Before accusing Mr. Pelosi, at a minimum, I think it would be relevant to check how much different his investment returns were from an index of the entire stock market. I think there have been Republicans that were overzealously accused of insider trading during the beginning of the pandemic too. I forget who, but there was a fuss made about several of them and Matthew Levine dissected some of the claims in his column and didn't think there was much there.
      - Consultant32452 5y ago
        The returns don't matter. The conflict of interest matters. If you commit insider trading but wind up losing money you are just a sucky criminal. Blind trust is the only acceptable option. It's been tradition for Presidents through most of my lifetime. Trump didn't do it and it was rightfully a big shit storm.
- kbenson 5y ago
  Maybe. Or maybe by nature of his relationship he gets approached more for interesting opportunities? Is Dr Dre an amazing talent scout, or was he out and about and by nature of his own fame approached by artists such that he could pick the obvious good opportunitie? Or maybe both apply? Perhaps having money, power or fame is an attractor of opportunities all on its own. It doesn't have to be that, but "better than average consistently" doesn't mean much to me when the person is already not average in a few other aspects.
  - mieses 5y ago
    He would also be approached more often with poor investing opportunities.
    - eurasiantiger 5y ago
      Much more, in fact, considering the level of scam spam any retail investor receives.
    - kbenson 5y ago
      That only really matters if you think he can't see good from bad at all. Even if he just ignored most and only acted on things that looked phenomenal, he might see more of those than the average person.
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  Paul Pelosi helped launch his wife's political career. Not the other way around. Just look at timelines of careers. Paul was already very successful before her career, not since. Nancy could do unpaid work in the Democratic party because of Paul's success ( 70-80's), which helped her career a lot.
- mercy_dude 5y ago
  Yeah every time someone comes defending this despicable human being who had got filthy rich in last 40yrs saying it is her husband, I just shake my head and ask when are these people going to retire? How much is enough for these people?
  - cronix 5y ago
    No defense was given. I was simply correcting an incorrect statement the way it was written to make it factually accurate. I also predicated it with > Not saying she didn't give him info
- hardolaf 5y ago
  Ah yes. The classic mega insider trading of... buying Apple stock. Yes, only the most non-obvious and insiderest trading ever imagine. Next you're going to accuse me of "insider trading" for moving all of my assets into the ARKG when it became clear COVID-19 was going to be declared a pandemic.
nl 5y ago
> Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. Doesn't every diversified fund in the world own "mega-cap tech stocks"? And most probably bought during May and June because their increased value meant they took a larger proportion of indexes, and index-following is a pretty widely used strategy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawayswede 5y ago
As a non-American, how is this legal? I was under the impression that financial trading is highly regulated in the US. I mean the possibility of her not giving insider info to her husband is very slim to none imo.
- m0zg 5y ago
  Rhetorical question to be sure. Guess who controls what's "legal".
- krageon 5y ago
  In the US, when you have a lot of money you are above the law.
  - throwawayswede 5y ago
    I get that, but in this case it seems like the opposite. If you have the law then you have a lot of money.
smaryjerry 5y ago
You don’t even need to know insider information about companies to make smart decisions if you a family member of Congress especially the leader of the entire Democratic Party, which currently controls the house, senate, and presidency. You only need to know what laws are likely to get passed in advance and consider how that will effect companies. Helps to have the person who leads and publicly threatens other democrats for their vote on items.

lostcolony 5y ago

Yeah, but take the random trades of 435 people and a normal distribution is still going to have a top (and bottom!) outlier. It's certainly reasonable to assume an investment manager (her husband, who is making most of the trades) might be part of the reason to be such an outlier. And even discounting that and looking for shenanigans, well..."she timed buying NFLX almost perfectly" with a purchase a month before it was announced they were going into the video game space; why the heck would she have known that? That isn't related to legislation, that isn't something they would have gone to the government for; that would be a purely business decision by Netflix. How the heck would she know about it?

hanniabu 5y ago
> why the heck would she have known that? That isn't related to legislation Who knows, maybe insider info they can trade on is a form of bribery and getting a congressman's ear.
emkoemko 5y ago
how about people in these positions shouldn't be trading... if i was in power i would think people would assume i am corrupt if i did trade.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  I mean, I'd be all for politicians having to put any investment money into blind trusts, sure. But that's different than saying they're insider trading.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    They have insiders knowledge and they are trading on that. It is legal insider trading.
    - danuker 5y ago
      Why is it legal?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Galanwe 5y ago

Returns alone mean nothing to evaluate an investment strategy against an other. At the _very_ least you would need to compare with the same level of volatility.

kesselvon 5y ago

Yeah, most hedge fund managers are also absolute trash though.

caublestone 5y ago

Paul Pelosi acted on insider info back in 07. I’ve wonder what his position in the market was when Henry Paulson was on his knees begging her to TARP. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-insidertrading-idUSTRE81700720120208 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-insidertradi... https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/09/26/hank-paulson-kneeling-before-pelosi https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/the-inside-job/2008/09/...

drited 5y ago
That Reuters article you referenced does not say that he traded on insider information. It says that Paul Pelosi may have gotten access to an IPO based on Nancy's position (although that is disputed by Pelosi who says that access was applied for in the standard manner through his broker). That's very different from insider trading.