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Nancy Pelosi sold a significant amount of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) stock late last year as part of a $69 million reshuffling of stocks. The sale was worth between $5 million and $25 million. She’s made hefty gains on these stocks and is finally taking profits, something that many believe is a signal that the market is topping out in the near term.
However, she’s not out of the market just yet. She used a portion of her gains from her stock sales to buy into LEAPS (Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities). The LEAPS options she bought included Apple, so she’s still bullish on tech. If you are looking for direct buys, the standout new position is her purchase of 25,000 shares of AllianceBernstein (NYSE:AB).
Why Pelosi sold AAPL stock and moved into AB stock instead
What Pelosi did actually mirrors what the rest of the market has been doing. Many investors are getting uneasy with tech stocks and have been moving into defensive names instead, albeit slowly. What makes Pelosi different is the strategy she is applying.
Her LEAPS on these tech stocks will let her keep long-term exposure. And in the meantime, purchases of stocks like AllianceBernstein will give her significant income. Her buy here is valued between $1 million and $5 million and is a defensive pivot. This is an asset manager with a juicy 9.4% forward dividend yield.
We can read her purchase of LEAPs as preparing for more near-term to medium-term volatility that could hit tech stocks before eventual success in around 2 years. Her LEAPs expire in January 2027; thus, one could assume that Pelosi expects volatility to hit the stock market later this year before recovering by early 2027.
Why does Pelosi like income now
Pelosi has historically maintained more tech exposure, but the move into income is actually quite smart. The Trump administration recently nominated Kevin Warsh to take over as the Federal Reserve’s chair after Jerome Powell’s term ends on May 15, 2026. Warsh is unusually dovish on interest rates, and if his future actions line up with what he’s saying today, income investors are in for a windfall.
Lower interest rates mean Treasury yields could be dragged down below 4% or more. With core inflation still hovering around 3%, this is going to make investors uncomfortable and starved for more yield. The end result will be that higher-yielding stocks will go up, something that Pelosi seems to be preparing for.
AB is giving her more than twice the “safe” yield she could get from Treasuries, plus capital appreciation. Once interest rates go lower and more investors pile into dividend stocks like AB, Pelosi could easily end up with 20%-plus gains on AB stock by next year. If tech stocks recover or keep rallying by 2027, she’s going to get the best of both worlds.
Pelosi’s “rinse and repeat” strategy
The moves we’re seeing aren’t a new phenomenon, and there’s now a clear trend. Nancy Pelosi is settling into a repeatable cycle where she sells appreciated shares, harvests the gains, buys LEAPS to maintain exposure, parks the freed capital in income stocks, and then uses that income to fund the next round of LEAPS when these expire in January 2027.
You’re looking at a self-funding conviction machine where the dividends from AB finance the cost of staying leveraged-long on the biggest AI names.
Next year, she’s likely going to exercise those LEAPS and pocket the price difference if those stocks are above the strike values. If the LEAPS still have meaningful extrinsic value near expiration, she could sell them on the open market rather than exercising. This avoids the capital outlay of actually purchasing shares, though it’s historically not what the Pelosi portfolio does.
If Apple somehow crashes below $100, she can let the options die worthless and lose the premium paid. The difference is that she takes less of a hit since the profits are parked in AB. If she holds AAPL stock outright and the stock crashes below $100, she’ll lose a lot more.
Out with a bang?
Pelosi announced last year that she won’t seek reelection, and her current term ends when the new Congress is sworn in next year. That means these LEAPS expire almost exactly when she leaves office.
Once she’s out of Congress, she’s no longer required to file Periodic Transaction Reports. So January 2027 will be the last publicly visible turn of this wheel. Investors who’ve been following her disclosures as a de facto signal for years will lose that window.
If all goes to plan, Nancy Pelosi (and her husband) will leave a legacy of being one of the most prolific and successful Wall Street investors.