As a Congressional Stock Trading Ban Stalls Out, a Niche Industry Thrives

As efforts to regulate stock trading by members of Congress stall out despite broad bipartisan support, a market for politician-tracking funds is flourishing.The latest of these funds were launched this week by Subversive Capital Advisor and Unusual Whales, which partnered up to create Democratic and Republican exchange-traded funds.“We have partnered with Unusual Whales to develop ETFs that will allow investors access to the approximate holdings of members of Congress in both parties,” portfolio manager Christian Cooper said.The new funds join a growing group, including “The Nancy Pelosi ETF,” which have sought to capitalize on what Representative Abigail Spanberger and other lawmakers have characterized as the insider knowledge of members of Congress since the issue erupted in early 2020.Although an analysis by Markets Insider found that Ms. Pelosi failed to beat the market last year — her portfolio’s value dropped by nearly 20 percent — she has long been a high-profile stock trading member of Congress.Ms. Pelosi’s reputation as a savvy trader even grew to the point that a socialist quarterly magazine, Jacobin, saw fit to name her the 2021 Wall Street “trader of the year” and the “Queen of Stonks.”“A quick online search shows how members of Congress perform relative to the rest of the market,” Mr. Cooper said. “We believe members of Congress have more information than the rest of us, and if they can trade on that information, we should be able to do the same, and now we can.”The funds that Mr. Cooper will be managing can be found under the tickers NANC and KRUZ, representing the Democratic and Republican funds, respectively, and referencing Speaker Pelosi and Senator Cruz. As of Friday afternoon, investors could buy into the Democratic and Republican funds at $24.88 and $24.89 a share, respectively. Both have trended upward since their first day on the market, February 7.At the beginning of the new Congress a pair of representatives, Ms. Spanberger and Chip Roy, reintroduced the Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust in Congress Act in the House. The bill would require members of Congress to put their investments into qualified blind trusts while in office, preventing them from trading specific stocks about which they may have privileged knowledge.“We are long overdue for a vote on legislation to ban members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks,” Ms. Spanberger said. “We saw tremendous momentum, we saw growing support in our districts, and we saw growing recognition across the political spectrum that such a reform needs to be made now.”The proposed legislation, which would build on 2012’s Stock Act, garnered support form across the political spectrum, including from those as far apart as Representatives Matt Gaetz and Adam Schiff.The push to pass the bill, however, stalled out in the last Congress despite broad support — including from some top Democrats like Congressman Steny Hoyer, then House majority leader. Beyond the bipartisan push behind the Trust in Congress Act, there are at least five other bills aimed at similarly blocking members of Congress from using privileged information while trading stocks.In early February, a group of eight Democratic representatives sent a letter to Speaker McCarthy calling on him to fulfill a promise he made in July 2022 to crack down on congressional stock trading.“What I’ve told everybody, we will come back and we will not only investigate this, we will come back with a proposal to change the current behavior,” Mr. McCarthy said then.In response to this push, Mr. McCarthy told “Triggered with Donald Trump Jr.” that, “I’m really looking at this — I want to do it on a bipartisan basis.”So far, however, there has been no concrete sign that the issue is a priority in the narrowly divided House, especially with other high-profile issues like the debt ceiling on the agenda.A key ingredient for making these funds tick is the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, which did not stop members of Congress from trading stocks but required them to report any trades involving more than $1,000.Although the Stock Act only requires members of Congress to report their trades within 45 days, Unusual Whales found that the average members of Congress reported trades within 10 to 20 days.While the passage of the Trust in Congress Act, or one of the other bills, could potentially be an existential threat to these funds, Mr. Cooper has signaled that he’s not worried about the issue, telling the Financial Times he does not expect the current Congress to pass any of the measures.

As a Congressional Stock Trading Ban Stalls Out, a Niche Industry Thrives

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