AP
- Paul Pelosi, Senator Nancy Pelosi's husband, bought 3,000 shares of Amazon and 5,000 shares of Facebook in January, the Senator disclosed in a February filing.
- Paul Pelosi, who is a businessman and investor, used call options to buy the shares at prices below what the market was trading at that date, the filing shows.
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Nancy Pelosi disclosed a $4.8 million purchase of Amazon shares and $720,000 purchase of Facebook shares in a filing Tuesday.
Her husband, investor and venture capitalist Paul Pelosi, made the buys, according to Barron's. He did so by exercising call options he held on both companies' stock, which allowed him to buy into both names at substantially lower prices than they were trading that day, filings and stock data show.
The Amazon options had a strike price of $1,600, nearly $300 below the price Amazon shares were trading for that day. He bought 3,000 shares - he had previously held only options at the end of 2018, according to a filing.
He bought 5,000 shares of Facebook, 3,000 of which had a strike price of $140 and the rest had a strike price of $150. Facebook traded around 37% above the lower strike price the day he exercised the calls. Prior to the purchase, Paul Pelosi already held between $500,000 and $1 million in Facebook stock, a filing shows.
On the same day Paul Pelosi made the purchases, Senator Pelosi criticized Facebook for "schmoozing" with the Trump administration. "I think that they have been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them," she said in a press conference, adding, "My thought about them is that all they want is their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them."
"They intend to be accomplices for misleading the American people with money from god knows where," she said.
All options Paul Pelosi held were set to expire January 17, the day after he exercised them. He held 40 remaining call options for Amazon, which he sold for between $500,000 and $1 million, the filing shows.
After the purchase, Facebook and Amazon took divergent paths. Amazon reached a $1 trillion valuation after announcing earnings, and traded on Wednesday around 16.1% above its January 16 closing price. Though Facebook posted strong earnings, it failed to impress a market that has grown accustomed to rapid growth from the social media giant. On Wednesday, Facebook was down as much as 6.5% from its January 16 close.
