Financial disclosures revealed that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) bought $5 million in Databricks stock in early March, just before it partnered with microchip stock Nvidia.

Databricks is a privately held company so it's unclear whether its value increased since she bought it, but it's fair to assume that the partnership with Nvidia will be beneficial.

Pelosi is worth an estimated $123 million even though her salary has been in the low six figures for the last several decades. $23 million of that money has been made in the last three years alone.

Her husband Paul Pelosi is a venture capitalist and is thought to be behind many of her transactions.

Not illegal

There has been no evidence that Pelosi engaged in anything illegal, such as insider trading, in any of her stock trades.

It is not illegal for the Pelosis to purchase individual stocks and make investments, although there are some pending bills in Congress that would make it illegal.

Cofounder of automated investing platform Autopilot Chris Josephs finds it problematic for public officials and their spouses to be allowed to trade stocks.

"From an ethical perspective, I believe it is extremely harmful for politicians to trade individual stocks," Josephs said. 'There are numerous jobs out there that don't allow employees from trading, yet our most powerful [A]mericans can."

It's not fair

Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, has also expressed his opposition to stock trading by public officials.

He responded to a comment by Pelosi in 2021 that it is a "free-market economy," and that elected officials "should be able to participate in that." Since then, Pelosi has said she supports the legislation, but at age 82 she will be leaving Congress soon and the law would not impact her anyway.

'"She might as well have said 'let them eat cake,'" he said. "Sure, it's a free-market economy. But your average schmuck doesn't get confidential briefings from government experts chock full of nonpublic information directly related to the price of stocks."

In other words, no one has proven that the Pelosis used any information from the briefings to inform their stock purchases, but just the fact that she has the information cannot help but inform her choices.

Bottom line: she has an advantage that other people don't have when they buy their stocks.

It's just not fair.