Periodic transaction reports of congressional stock trades were made public on Tuesday and to no one’s surprise, Colorado U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter continues to amass big tech holdings.
Perlmutter sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, a panel that is keenly aware of yet-to-be-public legislative information impacting the tech sector.
Perlmutter picked up between $1,000 and $15,000 of Google parent company Alphabet stock earlier this May, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband’s brazen June trades in the same name drew both scrutiny and mockery.
Days before the House of Representatives took its first votes on legislation to break up big technology companies, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi exercised a call option and bought 4,000 shares of stock in Google parent Alphabet, worth nearly $5 million.
The Alphabet investment was disclosed this morning in a periodic transaction report that shows Paul Pelosi also bought call options in stocks of other tech companies that could be affected by the antitrust bills. Pelosi purchased Amazon call options worth between $500,001 and $1 million, Apple call options worth between $100,001 and $250,000, and NVIDIA call options worth between $1 million and $5 million. The call options, which expired on June 17, gave Pelosi the ability to buy these stocks at specified levels, but unlike the Alphabet options they do not appear to have been exercised.
NEWS: Nancy Pelosi is launching a $1B hedge fund aiming to make concentrated bets on large cap tech stocks.
She cites her ‘proprietary research method’ of having inside information as a key differentiator to her competitors
— Exec Sum (@exec_sum) July 6, 2021
Beyond Alphabet, Perlmutter also appears to still be investing in big tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and Nvidia.
Pelosi and Perlmutter’s bets on tech names come as congressional momentum builds for splitting up big tech and passing domestic semiconductor subsidies.
If passed, both reforms could net tech shareholders like Pelosi and Perlmutter big pay-days.
Anti-trust legislation for big tech could be taken up as soon as this fall, according to Rep. Ken Buck.
Separately, Perlmutter’s investment last September in Berkshire Hathaway also received renewed attention this week following President Biden’s announcement of a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1412127389002256384?s=20
Perlmutter invested between $1,000-$15,000 of Berkshire Hathaway class B shares last September. The global conglomerate founded by Warren Buffet holds significant investments in rail across the U.S.
The Biden infrastructure deal agreed to this week contains $66 billion of rail funding, according to Unusual Whales.
Importantly, numerous House members and Senators have purchased stock that will directly benefit from this deal.
This is huge. With the incoming infrastructure projects, the benefit from trading these infrastructure stocks cannot be oversold. Politicians are benefiting from these deals, with possible projects to be awarded in these numerous stocks. They purchased before; they are benefiting after.
According to personal finance website Motley Fool, Berkshire Hathaway stands to benefit tremendously from the “epic” spending in the Biden infrastructure bill.
Spending of such epic proportions will be doled out a lot of different ways, but a great way to play the whole spending surge could be Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Railroad and transportation holdings feature prominently in Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of subsidiary businesses — including America’s largest railroad, BNSF, and privately held Pilot gas stations and big rig truck service stations. Manufacturing (like auto parts company Precision Castparts) is also a big piece of Berkshire. And there’s the company’s sprawling energy and utility business, which includes sizable holdings in renewable energy projects.
If it wasn’t already apparent, Perlmutter shows no signs of slowing down on investing in tech companies that fall under the jurisdiction of his House committee, or firms that would benefit from priority agenda items for Democrats like infrastructure.
When will the rest of Colorado media wake up and start investigating Perlmutter’s glaring conflicts of interest?