The Trade That Everyone Watched — And Almost Qualified
Nancy Pelosi (via Paul Pelosi) — NVDA — June 2021
- Politician
- Nancy Pelosi
- Party / State
- D-CA
- Chamber
- House
- Ticker
- NVDA
- Direction
- BUY
- Amount
- $250k+
- Owner
- Spouse ×0.85
- Trade Date
- 2021-06-18
- Disclosed
- 2021-07-02
- Lag
- 14d
Committee Overlap
As Speaker, Pelosi does not sit on committees but exercises oversight through the House Science, Space & Technology Committee. NVDA is Information Technology (sector-capped at 'industry'), limiting raw overlap to 35 × 1.15 = 40. Leadership bonus for Speaker (+20) is the dominant upward driver — but the Spouse multiplier (0.85×) is the decisive downward factor.
Speaker of the House
What Happened
NVDA rose approximately 40% in the 90 days following the trade. The CHIPS Act passed in August 2022, triggering a further re-rating of US semiconductor stocks. NVDA's data center segment — directly supported by domestic chip policy — grew from $11B to over $47B in the following two years.
SwampScore Breakdown
Filed as Spouse (Paul Pelosi) → 0.85× multiplier. Raw sum 91 × 0.85 × 1.0 (House) = 77.35 → 77. A Self-filed trade would score 91 → HIGH.
The Full Story
On June 18, 2021 — one day after McCaul's own NVDA purchase — Paul Pelosi exercised call options to acquire between $1 million and $5 million of NVIDIA stock. Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House and a central figure in shepherding the CHIPS and Science Act, which directly benefited US semiconductor manufacturers including NVIDIA. The trade was disclosed July 2. It became the most viral STOCK Act filing in history, spawning a cottage industry of "Pelosi tracker" apps and hedge fund strategies. NVDA rose ~40% in the following three months.
Why SwampScore Scored It This Way
This trade is a textbook example of what SwampScore calls "the Spouse discount." The Pelosi household clearly had informational advantage — Speaker-level oversight of semiconductor legislation. But Paul Pelosi filed, not Nancy. Research on STOCK Act filings (PMC 2022) finds that Self-filed accounts show higher informed-trade alpha than Spouse accounts. SwampScore penalizes Spouse filings at 0.85× because some distance exists between the filer and the official with committee access. The 77 score is MEDIUM, not LOW — the signal is real. But it is not the same category of signal as a self-directed trade by a member sitting on the relevant committee.
The Signal Lesson
The Spouse multiplier is one of the most important — and counterintuitive — factors in the formula. A high-profile trade by the Speaker's husband scores 14 points lower than if the Speaker had filed it herself. That's not punishing the trade — it's calibrating confidence. The Spouse discount is empirically supported: Self trades outperform Spouse trades at higher rates in the historical dataset. SwampScore is a signal engine, not a political statement.
See live High-signal trades
SwampScore runs on every new STOCK Act filing. Only 5.1% qualify as High.