by When even a man who’s earned the moniker “The Wolf of Wall Street” is calling out the suspicious timing of your stock transactions, you know it must be really bad.
Those who are familiar with movies are probably familiar with Jordan Belfort, the pump-and-dump stock trader and anti-hero whose life and times on Wall Street inspired the 2013 Martin Scorsese movie that bears his nickname.
It would also inspire federal prosecutors to put him behind bars for 22 months and fine him $110 million for securities fraud, as NPR noted after the release of Belfort’s 2007 memoir, also called “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
The point is that if someone knows about shady stock dealings, it’s Belfort. And, in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson on “The Tucker Carlson show” published Friday on the social media platform X, the wolf said it was awfully funny how former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, a businessman and founder of the investment firm Financial Leasing Services Inc, seemed to consistently beat seasoned pros.
The gist of the interview before that point was that the average lay investor is better off putting money into the S&P 500 — an index of the 500 largest companies on U.S. stock exchanges — than trying to make picks individually or timing the market.
However, as Carlson pointed out about 24 minutes into the interview, “it appears that members of Congress consistently beat the S&P 500 in their personal investments.”
Without skipping a beat, Belfort shot back with, “Nancy Pelosi.”
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“And a lot of others,” Carlson said. “Nancy Pelosi, do you think is a stock-picking genius?”
“She has to be operating on information that’s non-public,” Belfort responded.
“Doesn’t that make her a criminal?” Carlson said.
“Yeah, but you know, look at Joe Biden,” Belfort said, before going through the list of financial irregularities in the president’s past that the establishment media is fond of ignoring.
“We’re living in an alternative universe right now where people in power — especially on the left, right? — can operate almost with perfect impunity. Pelosi’s a perfect example. I mean, she’s not the only one. But it’s inconceivable that someone had that high a return off the market when everyone else can’t do it.
“So what’s the edge?” Belfort asked rhetorically. “The edge is that she knows [about] legislation. Also, you know, maybe someone’s whispering in her ear … they want to be on her good side, right? So, it’s hard to prove.”
“But it’s just prima facie,” Carlson countered. “So, if what you’re saying is true and that is that the most sophisticated people in the world can’t beat the S&P 500 average … then any member of Congress, I think they are, on average, dumber than the population –“
“Especially the career politician,” Belfort said.
“For sure,” Carlson responded. “There’s no possibility they can do that without insider information.”
“No, it’s not possible,” Belfort said, before offering this blunt assessment: “If it looks like sh*t. smells like sh*t, then, guess what? It’s sh*t. Or bullsh*t in this case.”
The relevant portion of the video in question begins at 24:20:
Just so we’re clear on Nancy Pelosi’s amazing stock-picking run, let’s look at some trades made by her and her husband, Paul Pelosi:
May-June 2021: Paul Pelosi bought up to $11 million worth of tech stocks just before a suite of antitrust legislation endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, called the “Ending Platform Monopolies Act,” was moved forward on by the House. His curiously timed transaction managed to bring in $5.3 million alone from a purchase of stock of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
June 2022: Paul Pelosi buys 20,000 shares of a semiconductor company as the “America COMPETES Act,” which would subsidize U.S. semiconductor production, worked its way through Congress.
December 2022: Paul Pelosi dumps 10,000 shares of Google stock just before President Biden’s Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google.
Remarkable, that. If it smells like effluence to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” here’s a newsflash: It probably is.
Americans who think that Nancy Pelosi is some kind of Warren Buffett in a pantsuit are deluding themselves.
She’s not the only one, but she’s a perfect object lesson in why members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks — period.
