Pelosi vs. Trump

A reproducible framework for measuring the returns of disclosed political trades. Both filings flow through the same normalized schema and metric engine — so the numbers are directly comparable.

Snapshot 2026-05-21 · source on GitHub

Headline (time-weighted return)

Filer Window Portfolio TWR SPY buy-and-hold vs SPY
Pelosi 2014-11 → today (11.5y) +55% +338% −283 pp
Trump 2025-01 → today (16 mo) +65% +42% +23 pp

TWR = each day's % change on positions held at start of day, chained geometrically. The same convention investment funds use for NAV-per-share performance. The dollar-weighted-alpha view (which we previously reported) is structurally biased by trade sizing and disclosure timing; TWR is the harder, fairer test.

Equity curves (interactive)

Hover for date+value. Drag the slider below each chart to zoom the time axis. Click a legend entry to toggle that series.

Pelosi (blue, ~11 years) and Trump (red, ~16 months) on the same axis. Solid = portfolio TWR. Dashed = SPY-clone (same long/short timing, all in SPY) — measures stock-picking edge. Dotted = SPY buy-and-hold over each filer's window — measures the harder "did you beat passive" test.
Apples-to-apples view: same Jan 2025 → today window, both portfolios rebased to 0%. Includes vanilla SPY buy-and-hold (green) for absolute comparison.

All trades

Every disclosed transaction from both filers, sortable and searchable. Ret = total return from trade date to today (sign-adjusted for sells). α SPY = return minus SPY return over the same window. Dashes mean the ticker has no yfinance coverage (bonds, preferred shares, delisted names) — those rows still appear so the universe is complete.

Tip: type a ticker in the search box to filter (e.g. NVDA or PLTR). Click any column header to sort. Click filer/side to filter to one filer or side. Download CSV for the full table.

What's actually in each portfolio

Pelosi

  • 61 PTRs · 203 transactions · 185 with equity ticker
  • ~24 unique tickers — highly concentrated
  • Dollar-weighted dominated by ~5 names: AAPL, NVDA, V, AMZN, FB/META
  • Per-trade alpha std: 393% (heavy-tailed)
  • Top winners: NVDA buys 2021-22 (+1100% to +1192% alpha). Top loser: AAPL sell on 2017-01-20, day before Apple's 10× run (−1261% alpha)

Trump

  • 10 PTRs · 4,289 transactions · 3,089 with equity ticker
  • ~964 unique tickers — diversified, NOT index-following
  • Only 18% of $ in index funds; 82% in individual stocks
  • Per-trade alpha std: 26% (tight, fund-like)
  • Top winners: INTC buys March 2026 (+142% alpha); the famous Dell buys pre-endorsement (+88%). Top losers: late-March sells of PENG/APLS/MRVL/AMD just before they rallied.

The five trades that made the news

A YouTube investigation flagged five tickers as cases of "trade, then publicly endorse." Our framework confirms each directional claim:

Ticker Trades Gross deployed $-weighted return Story
DELL 4 buys (Feb 10 – Mar 23) $3.07M +87.65% All buys preceded May 8 "go out and buy a Dell" remark.
MU 6 buys (Mar 2 – Mar 25) $373K +68.43% Buys cluster ahead of "just left the head of Micron" comment.
TMO 3 buys + 2 sells $199K −7.60% One buy on the same day as Trump's March 11 site visit. Worst trade of the five.
PLTR 16 trades $3.71M −2.99% Bag-holder pattern. Big Feb 10 sell at near-peak partially offset subsequent dip-buys that kept falling.
INTC 6 buys (Mar 2 – Mar 25) $189K +142.48% Biggest single-name winner in the news-cited slate.

Is it indexing or stock-picking?

The Trump legal defense calls these "fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions" — implying passive index-following. Five tests, all reject:

Test Indexer would look like Actual
Index-fund share of $ 90%+ 18%
VIG / SPY net flow Net buying Net selling −$20M
Position-size dispersion (CV) ~0.2 – 0.5 3.95
Top-10 concentration <15% 33%
Round-trip churn Negligible 458 names traded both ways

Most charitable read: separately managed accounts (SMAs) running an active large-cap strategy with AI/semi tilts. Active stock-picking by a third-party manager — not Trump personally, but also not passive.

What this measurement cannot claim

  1. No causal claim about information advantage. The numbers measure ex-post performance of disclosed trades. They do not prove either filer traded on material non-public information.
  2. Owner ambiguity is huge on both sides. ~99% of Pelosi's PTR trades are owner=spouse (Paul Pelosi). Trump's 278-Ts are filed under self but line items say "Your Broker Acted As Agent" and "UNSOLICITED"; per news coverage, the assets sit in a trust controlled by Don Jr. and Eric Trump.
  3. Amounts are tiered, not exact. Both regimes disclose ranges ($1M–$5M etc.). Midpoint substitution adds noise.
  4. Trump's bond and money-market trades aren't measured. ~1,200 of his 4,289 transactions are fixed-income with no equity ticker and no yfinance coverage. A bond price provider would be needed to compare apples-to-apples on the full book.