Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House who represents San Francisco, has the most watched trading record in Congress. Every few weeks a new report appears, financial news sites write about it, and social media accounts post the tickers within minutes. This guide explains where those reports come from, what they show, and what they cannot tell you.
Pelosi announced on November 6, 2025 that she would not seek reelection, and said she would serve out her current term (PBS NewsHour). Until she leaves office, the reporting rules below apply to her and her household.
Where the reports come from
Like every member of the House, Pelosi files her trade reports with the Clerk of the House. The reports are posted on the Clerk’s public disclosure site, disclosures-clerk.house.gov, where anyone can search by name and year and open the PDF.
There are two kinds of filings to know about:
- Periodic transaction reports (PTRs). These list individual purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, options and similar assets worth more than $1,000. They are the source of almost every “Pelosi just bought” headline.
- Annual financial disclosure reports. Filed once a year, these list assets, income, liabilities and positions held. They give a fuller picture of what the household owns, but they arrive much later.
WallStPal reads the House reports and lists each stock and option line on the Congress page, with a link back to the original PDF. Our guide to reading a PTR explains every column.
The 45-day window
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, called the STOCK Act, sets the deadline. A member must report a covered trade within 30 days of being notified of it, and in no case later than 45 days after the trade itself (House Ethics Committee).
That means a trade can legally become public six weeks after it happens. By then the price may have moved a long way. Pelosi’s recent reports have often been filed well inside the window, sometimes within days, but you cannot count on that for any member. Always look at both dates on a line: the transaction date and the date the report was filed.
Why the trades are usually Paul Pelosi’s
On most of Pelosi’s reports, the owner column says SP, which means spouse. The trades are made in accounts belonging to her husband, Paul Pelosi, a businessman and investor in San Francisco. The STOCK Act requires members to report their spouse’s trades as well as their own, so his trades appear on her filings.
Pelosi’s office has said she is not involved in his trading. In 2022 her spokesman, Drew Hammill, said, “The Speaker does not own any stocks” and “has no prior knowledge or subsequent involvement in any transactions” (report via Sinclair stations). Critics argue that a member’s household should not trade individual stocks at all, and her record became a reference point in that debate: Senator Josh Hawley’s bill to ban member trading was first named the PELOSI Act, short for Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments, before it was renamed the HONEST Act (NOTUS, July 2025). The reports themselves only show what was traded and when.
Options trades and how to read them
Many Paul Pelosi trades are in options rather than shares. An option is a contract that gives the holder the right, but not the duty, to buy or sell a stock at a set price (the strike price) before a set date (the expiration). A call option gains value when the stock rises. A put option gains value when it falls.
On a House PTR, an options line carries the asset code [OP]. The description line underneath usually says what happened, for example “Purchased 50 call options, strike $150, expiring 1/16/26.” Here is how to read it:
- 50 call options. A standard U.S. stock option covers 100 shares, so 50 contracts control 5,000 shares.
- Strike $150. The price at which the shares can be bought.
- Expiring 1/16/26. The last day the option can be used. Options with a year or more to run are often called LEAPS.
- Amount. The range reflects the money paid for the options, which is far less than the value of the shares they control.
You will also see lines where call options were exercised, meaning the holder used them to buy the shares at the strike price. Those appear as stock purchases [ST], with a description naming the original options. A single strategy can therefore show up as an options purchase on one report and a stock purchase on a later one.
Reading the amounts
Every amount is a range, never an exact figure. Pelosi’s reports often use the larger brackets, such as $1,000,001 to $5,000,000 or $5,000,001 to $25,000,000. A $5,000,001 to $25,000,000 line could be closer to five million or closer to twenty-five. Share counts sometimes appear in the description, which helps, but prices do not.
Why the news always arrives late
Three delays stack up when you follow these trades:
- The legal delay. Up to 45 days between the trade and the report.
- The processing delay. The Clerk posts the PDF after it is filed, and data sites need time to read it.
- The market delay. By the time a report is widely shared, other traders have already reacted to it.
Some exchange-traded funds and online tools try to copy congressional trades. Any copy is buying after these delays, at a different price, and without knowing the reasons behind the trade or what else the household owns. That gap is the main limit of following any one person’s disclosures.
Examples
January 2025: calls, an exercise and two big sales. Pelosi’s PTR certified on January 17, 2025 (original PDF from the House Clerk) lists nine lines, all marked SP for spouse:
- Purchases on January 14, 2025 of 50 call options each on Alphabet (strike $150), Amazon (strike $150), Nvidia (strike $80), Vistra (strike $50) and Tempus AI (strike $20), all expiring January 16, 2026.
- On December 20, 2024, the exercise of 500 Nvidia call options bought on November 22, 2023, for 50,000 shares at a $12 strike, and the exercise of 140 Palo Alto Networks call options for 14,000 shares at a $100 strike.
- On December 31, 2024, a partial sale of 31,600 Apple shares (reported at $5,000,001 to $25,000,000) and 10,000 Nvidia shares ($1,000,001 to $5,000,000).
The report shows several of the points above in one place: the spouse owner code, options described in plain text, exercises recorded as stock purchases, and wide amount ranges. The trades in mid-January were reported within three days.
July 2022: a Nvidia sale at a loss. In July 2022, Paul Pelosi sold 25,000 Nvidia shares at $165.05 each, about $4.1 million, and the filing reported a loss of $341,365, according to Forbes. The sale came as the Senate was about to pass a large bill subsidizing U.S. chip manufacturing. Pelosi’s office told Forbes he “decided to sell the shares at a loss rather than allow the misinformation in the press regarding this trade to continue.” The case shows that a sale can be driven by publicity as much as by a view on the stock, and that a report alone does not tell you why.
How to track her trades on WallStPal
- Open her member page from the Congress page (California, or the site search) to see her reported stock and option lines with the owner, the range and the number of days between the trade and the filing.
- Press Follow on her member page. With a free My Desk account, her new trades appear in your activity feed and in the Friday summary email. Our My Desk walkthrough shows how.
- Compare her reports with other members’ on track records, keeping in mind that ranges make any return figure an estimate.
Where the data comes from
- House periodic transaction reports and annual reports: Clerk of the House financial disclosures
- The 30-day and 45-day deadlines: House Committee on Ethics
- The January 2025 report quoted above: PTR filing 20026590
For the law behind the reports, see how the STOCK Act works and our guide to STOCK Act penalties and loopholes.
Explain it like I’m 13
Nancy Pelosi works in Congress. Her husband, Paul, buys and sells stocks. Because she is in Congress, the law says the family has to tell the public about his trades too, on a form that goes to an office in the Capitol and gets posted online.
The catch is timing. They have up to about six weeks to fill in the form. So when you read “Pelosi bought Nvidia,” the purchase might have happened a month ago.
The form also doesn’t give exact dollar amounts. It says something like “between $1 million and $5 million.” And some trades are options, which are like paying a small fee today for the right to buy a stock at a fixed price later. If the stock goes up a lot, that right becomes valuable. If it doesn’t, the fee is lost.
So the form tells you what was traded and roughly how big it was. It doesn’t tell you why, and it doesn’t let you buy at the same price.
Questions about this guide? Pal reads it with you and answers in plain English.
WallStPal explains public filings. Nothing here is investment advice. Editorial policy · Corrections