Back in the days of the COVID pandemic when sourdough baking emerged as a popular pastime, Chris Josephs and his friends found themselves fascinated by a different kind of hobby: social media buzz over the stock trading activities of politicians.
Josephs, 29, a serial entrepreneur who has been trading stocks since he was 17 years old, saw lawmakers in Congress investing in the market while voting on legislation that could benefit stocks.
"Initially, it seemed kind of funny," he said. "But once I started diving a little bit more into it, I started realizing .. they're making a lot of money on it."
The "Pelosi Tracker" account he created on X in 2022 went viral, gaining over a million followers. Named after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the account shows trades made by her husband Paul, an investor who owns and operates Financial Leasing Services, Inc., a real estate and venture capital firm. Pelosi's spokesman has said she doesn't own any stocks and isn't involved in her husband's portfolio.
The stated goal of the account — "to get [politicians] banned from trading" — hasn't worked so far. Trading individual stocks is legal for members of Congress, and it's difficult to prove they're trading on insider information, which is illegal.
So Josephs has taken an "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. In January 2023, he and his team developed Autopilot, an investment app that allows users to track and mimic the trades of notable politicians and high-profile investors.
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“What we have now is creators and other financial professionals can go and launch their own portfolios on Autopilot,” Josephs said. “So Autopilot is now becoming a marketplace to go in and have their money managed.“
How does it work?
After downloading the Autopilot app, users can select and follow a number of portfolios, including those of congressional lawmakers, hedge fund managers and other financial influencers.
The app links users to their brokerages and allows them to choose an amount to invest. Once the portfolio trade activity of the accounts they're following is made public, their brokerage will update to reflect some of the same holdings, according to Autopilot's website. "When they buy, you buy; when they sell, you sell," according to the website. The app has a $99 annual subscription fee.
One of the strongest performers on Autopilot is a portfolio called "Inverse Cramer." It bets against TV personality Jim Cramer’s picks and is up 46% in the past year, followed by the "Pelosi Tracker," up 42% for the year. The "Burry Tracker," which follows the trades of Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager who famously foresaw the 2008 financial crisis, is up 49% for the year.
The reviews are in
Opinions are mixed on Reddit, with some users saying they've made gains by following and replicating the "Pelosi Tracker." Other users said they had no luck after six months.
Some say they've made gains by following the Pelosi Tracker, but others said they had no luck
Because the app relies heavily on public disclosures, trade activity could be delayed. Members of Congress have 45 days to report trades made by them or their families, creating a lag time that could affect outcomes.
And while the political portfolios are eye-catching, they are "strictly for entertainment purposes and should not be considered investment advice," according to a review by Spartan Trading, a Canadian-based online consultant.
Pelosi is far from the only member of Congress associated with stock market trading. A 2024 review of the portfolios of 34 Republican and Democratic members puts her (or her husband) at the bottom of the top 10.
Josephs said he thinks the publicity will make politicians more cautious, but not everyone agrees. Mark Hays, senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, said the laws that restrict them from capitalizing on insider policy information are already in place, although "they may need to be strengthened."
"With that in mind, I worry creating a tool to track politician's stock trades for investment purposes is at best opportunistic, and at worst, cynical — doubling down on the speculative, zero-sum gamification of both finance and politics that seems to have infected every corner," Hays said.
Even if they are eventually banned from trading, Autopilot has a broader vision, Josephs said. It will probably look like other robo-advisers and social investing apps like eToro that allow people to follow different investors and mimic their trades, Josephs said.
“In 2027 the way that the product would look ideally is people come in and they put some of their money around Inverse Cramer’s, alongside some of their favorite creators,” he said. “But they also have a bulk of their retirement, their real money, not following these fancy Pelosi portfolios but connected with trusted and transparent, actual professional, certified money managers.”
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