Stock market activities of U.S. elected officials have been steadily becoming a more prominent and contentious topic in recent years.
The overall trading successes of members of Congress – as evidenced by the staggering returns generated by trading bots that mimic their investments – have, in fact, led many to believe that they have heavily engaged in insider trading.
With regard to the most prominent – though not the most successful – trader in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, this much was explicitly stated by the “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort and heavily implied by Robert Kennedy.
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But while it is now generally known that politicians tend to make well-timed trades and that the semiconductor giant Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has been one of their most lucrative recent investments, it perhaps isn’t as widely known which stocks have seen the highest volume coming from politicians in 2024.
Which sectors are favored by U.S. politicians?
The trading data made available by Quiver Quantitative, a platform known for tracing politicians’ investments and creating strategies around them, as well as shining a spotlight on the most suspicious trades on X, demonstrates that there are three main asset types elected officials favor in 2024.
The first of these are U.S. Treasury bonds, which have, since the start of the year, seen trades worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – both in the terms of purchases and sales.
Numerous municipal securities are also highly popular, with congressional trading volume in the millions of dollars – again, both in terms of buying and selling.
Finally, Congresspeople seemingly have a preference for big tech stocks when it comes to major publicly traded companies, with three firms taking the spotlight.
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL)
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) has not only been extensively traded by the U.S. Congress since the start of 2024 but has overwhelmingly been sold.
The biggest movers of the technology stock are Representative Tommy Tuberville, who sold up to approximately $500,000 worth of AAPL in January, and Representative Shri Thanedar – the holder of the dubious honor of having made one of the worst-timed Congressional trades of the year – who offloaded up to about $50,000 in late January.
Among the purchases of Apple shares, an honorable mention certainly goes to Pete Session who bought $360 worth of the stock on February 29 and reported the trade on the same day.
The selling isn’t particularly surprising given Apple stock’s 2024 performance, as the technology firm’s shares declined 8.90% since January 1. The trend has persisted in more recent trading, and AAPL is 10.71% down in the last 30 days and closed the latest session 0.59% in the red at $169.12.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)
A total of four transactions involving Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) have been recorded since the start of 2024 and, despite the company achieving the honor of becoming the world’s biggest in January, as many as three have been sales.
On February 7, Pete Sessions acquired up to$15,000 worth of MSFT, while Shri Thanedar sold up to $30,000 on January 25, and Josh Gottheimer offloaded up to $15,000 on January 18.
On the stock market, however, MSFT has been doing substantially better than Apple, and the technology giant is 8.42% up year-to-date (YTD). More recently, however, there has been a slowdown, and Microsoft shares even saw a decline totaling 2.89% in the last 30 days and 0.14% in the last day.
The latest MSFT closing price stands at $402.09.
Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW)
Nancy Pelosi’s acquisition of up to $1 million worth of Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) call options on February 12 and up to $250,000 worth on February 21 is, arguably, the most talked about Congressional trade of 2024.
Unlike with Pelosi’s much-discussed Nvidia bet and despite the brief price surge after the trade was reported, Palo Alto has spent much of the year on the decline. Since January 1, the cybersecurity company is down 3.38%.
Due to a climb that took place between mid-January and mid-February – and the mid-February cliff PANW stock fell off of – the 30-day performance of Palo Alto shares is even more drastically in the red – 23.50%.
Finally, the last full trading session saw PANW shares close at $278.86 after falling 4.21% in the day.
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