People keep asking us for a quick tutorial on how to use autopilot
and copy trade Nancy Pelosi.
So here it is.
The concept of the app is very simple, where first you go through
our marketplace of top investors, verified by their actual portfolio performance,
and once you select one, you then can see their actual portfolio performance and the
current holdings that they own right here.
You then connect one of your portfolios so that the trading happens
directly in your own broker.
Then you just say how much you want to autopilot with and then boom, you now
have a verified investor investing for you so that when they buy, you buy, and when
they sell, you sell all automatically.
If there's one thing Congress is good at, it's boosting
their own trading portfolios.
I mean, they've got plenty of time to kill while not passing regulation.
So I do see how they squeeze it in.
So this app called autopilot has come around
and it's doing something very clever.
It's allowing users to follow and trade like members of Congress
and top investors.
So you can be right up there with them.
Released in January 2023, autopilot pulls trading data filed by members of Congress
and allows users to copy their trades.
The app also allows its users to mimic investments made by prominent hedge fund
managers like Michael Burry, the subject of the 2015 movie The Big Short.
Via their federally required 13 F filings.
Co-Founder Chris Josephs talked about the app with ABC news back in November.
Take a look.
It all started off as infuriating because it's you're like, what the f?
Like, how are they allowed to do it when other Americans can't?
As long as a trade is reported before 45 days, there's no law preventing
members of the House or Senate from trading stocks, even if the bills
they pass or committees they sit on could influence a company's stock price.
Outraged at first, Chris then saw an opportunity to get in on the action.
He moved out west and with three friends, launched the app autopilot.
It lets users follow a politician's trades and then copy them, automatically buying
or selling the same stock a lawmaker does at whatever dollar amount they like.
That's where the money is.
Yeah, the reason why we initially set out with the politicians
is because they were killing it.
- They were killing it. - They were killing it.
- Yeah, they were making a lot of the money. - You're trying to get in on the money.
I'm trying to get in on the money. Yep.
This past Monday, Josephs revealed that the app had breezed past the $100
million trading milestone, with more than 55 million of that from trades that copied
congressionally filed trades.
The app does not allow its users to mimic every member of Congress.
So your dreams are following the investments of Lauren Boebert or Marjorie
Taylor Greene have been squashed. I'm so sorry to save you all that money.
Instead, it provides for legislators to copy Rep Nancy Pelosi, Dan Crenshaw,
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Dan Goldman, or an amalgam of stocks from the top ten
politicians traders based on their 2022 performance, Joseph said the portfolios
of Crenshaw and Pelosi, which the congresswoman has said are made
by her husband, Paul Pelosi, when he's anyway are the two most popular to mirror.
Pelosi's reported trades increased
by 45% in 2023 and Crenshaw's by 41%.
I'm sure that's just random and not insider information at all.
Unsurprisingly, they are also the two most well-known advocates
for stock trading in Congress.
- Take a look. - At members of Congress and their spouses.
Be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in Congress.
No, no to the second one.
Any we have a responsibility to report this is a free market
and people we are free market economy.
They should be able to participate in that.
Several members of Congress have bipartisanly tried to ban
the practice in 2022 to no avail.
Rep.
Ro Khanna, AOC, Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley have all attempted to introduce their
own bills, as well as combat politicians as well to combat politician trading.
Despite its success, the app's co-founders co founders adamantly say
they hope it leads Congress to ban themselves from trading.
Back in January, Josephs posted a 2023 recap for the app,
saying in a statement politicians stock trading is a poison for society.
Watching them make millions creates distrust in our institutions and
instills anger, frustration and despair.
Seeing them do it all so blatantly and beyond that,
it is one of the most bipartisan, agreed upon topics in the US right now.
Everyone wants it banned.
Yet for years nothing happened, its definition hypocritical.
The movement seemed to stall.
For this reason, people can't be the hero by passively following a movement.
And what better way to showcase the hypocrisy of it all than by literally
creating a way to copy their trades?
If you can't beat them, join them, Joseph's also told insider.
That's why we're doing this, honestly.
It's partly to continue holding their feet to the fire.
We are not going away.
I think it's a genius idea, the one part that I don't.
Get about.
Otherwise I would be doing this app immediately is they have
to file their trades within 45 days.
So you're 45 days delayed then?
I don't think they're automatically getting the information, which might
be completely pointless at that point.
Yeah. So I thought the same thing, Ben.
But the proof's in the pudding because it's working.
And so, look, first of all, should they be allowed to, do insider
trading like they are doing now?
Of course not. That's outrageous.
In fact, if you just ask Martha Stewart if insider trading is legal,
it's not unless you work in Congress.
I mean, it doesn't get any worse than that where rules for thee,
but not for me, right?
And they're the ones that with the most information.
They're the thing that because it's not just whether they make something
illegal or not, it's if they're going to even talk about regulation,
it could affect the stock market price.
And not just regulating, but deregulating.
If you say you're going to deregulated, an industry,
the price of those stocks will go up.
But they could also bet the stocks to go down.
So now I think everyone on planet Earth, other than the corrupt degree that they
shouldn't do this, you see, the populists on the left and the right agree on this.
But remember, the great majority of Congress, our corporate Democrats
and corporate Republicans who are largely corrupt, they take money from corporations
and then they invest into corporations.
They knowing the information that they do.
But the bottom line is even, you know, that time concern I have as well.
But if if it turns out that Nancy Pelosi is making 45% every year now,
it's not every year it was last year, but I've seen the numbers
and her the amount that she because you couldn't get to 45% return in a year.
That's not miraculous. That's not impossible.
But it is very difficult to get to 45% return.
Very, very difficult if you do that ten, 20 years running.
Nah. Now you're full of crap.
That is not that's not possible under a normal circumstance.
So if these guys are copying her trades, well, it's a free country,
brothers and sisters, right?
If she can do it, then they can do it.
And if they get a similar return as her, even with the timing issue,
- I think it's genius. - Yeah.
Assuming they're not day trading, assuming they're just holding stuff for a while.
Exactly.
Guys, don't be like Ben's absolutely right.
Be careful.
Like you can get started this way, and then you get hooked into day trading
and think that you know, something, etc..
No, I knew a guy all the way back at Occupy Wall Street,
and he came all the way out of his way to make sure that he helped the protest.
And then I had lunch with him and he said, by the way, as I'm doing this, I'm
copying the trades of the top hedge funds.
Okay.
So he was doing that all the way a dozen years ago, right.
And and so now they made an app out of doing that.
And that makes sense too, because remember, there are two
different parts that we told you.
The politicians who have the insider information that are you can see
the results and they're amazing, right?
Or you could just follow the hedge fund guys and they have access
to other information.
And and they also make spectacular money and but you won't every time.
So don't expect that you're going to make 50% return every year.
But the fact that they're doing so well through the app is the proof
that that they are doing insider trading.
You cannot do this kind of return over a period of decades.
It's a totally impossible. And so our politicians are crooks.
Yeah, I would say that this is a I when I, when I heard about this story,
I thought it was really cool.
I think sometimes certain types of activism not only kind of blows the
whistle or lifts the hood up on clearly what is corruption?
I mean, that's exactly what this is by our elected representatives.
Perhaps this gives us one reason why Pelosi is still around.
I'm not sure why.
I mean, perhaps for her own benefit, we clearly see that, and I really take
issue with her comments here in this story that, that we live in a free market.
That is absolutely not true from almost any macroeconomic analysis.
This is not a free market in the sense that we have massive competition
across many different industries, and it's clearly not free market behavior
to actually talk about things and then influence your own portfolio,
let alone it's not merely speaking about things or discussing regulation,
it's the laws you pass or the laws you discuss, or even the influence you have on
executive orders that actually determine how much money you make.
So I think that autopilot is really cool.
I think it's great to blow the whistle on the abuses of those in power
to see the seers, so to speak.
And I think it's, it's it's also really astonishing.
It shows the corruption and abuse in action by showing
how much money these folks are making.
And, you know, it blows away what a stockbroker.
Would advise you to do, or the S&P 500 or any of these things.
So and sadly, it's not technically corruption.
It is insider trading that they're allowed to do.
But it's legal.
They're not breaking the laws, and we're not electing people that are
going to go in there and change that.
How is it possible that the only people, the people most actually,
able to benefit in a corrupt way are the only ones who it's legal for?
Yeah. Like that is very perverse.
You know why it's possible? Because they're the ones writing the laws.
Yeah.
- And with all these. - Corporations in their pocket.
Yeah.
And one last thing about the giant downside of this
that I don't want you to miss because.
So if you remember, right, as Covid was happening, a bunch of senators sold their,
stocks in things that were like goods that we might have trouble getting,
during a lockdown.
Right.
And then they started buying zoom because they figured things
people would be using zoom more.
And that turned out to be obviously spectacularly true.
And they started buying stocks in some drug companies.
Okay. Now.
And they made a killing in doing that. That was totally outrageous.
But the last layer of the corruption is, well, then these brothers and sisters
know what companies they're invested in, and then they have a financial,
incentive to protect those companies.
So, I mean, look, I think the vaccines worked, but if you're anti-vaccine,
that's the kind of thing that drives people crazy and go, how do I know
if it was true or not true to Nancy Pelosi and Dan Crenshaw, who's a Republican?
The Democrats and the Republicans, they're invested in these, not that they're
necessarily invested in drug companies.
I don't know their particular portfolios, but they could
be invested in those things.
And then I don't know if what they're saying about the drug is true
or just something that for them to make more money.
Right. The real problem is not the vaccines.
In my opinion.
The real problem is all the things I listed earlier where they don't
allow competition, they don't allow us to negotiate drug prices.
I mean, and to Ramesh's point, what kind of a free market
where you can't negotiate prices?
That's literally the opposite. The exact opposite of a free market.
And it's the exact proof.
Sorry to jump in, but it's the exact proof of the corruption in their hearts, really,
because they have the buying power as the government of all of the people.
They could instead say you'll never get be able to deal with the government
if you don't allow complete negotiating of your prices.
Right?
And they instead are happy to say, yeah, sure, just have windfall and screw
over the people we're here to represent.
- I mean. - I have my issues with Adam Smith, right?
Sort of the the pundit of capitalism in certain ways.
But when he actually describes in the Wealth of Nation, the the wealth of
Nations, the invisible hand that actually makes a free market possible, it this
we're actually talking about the hands of greed of congressional legislators.
There's nothing invisible about this.
In fact, thanks to I'm appreciative of this.
What's it called again?
This, this or this autopilot for actually showing that the hands
that determine a corrupt pseudo market are actually not invisible at all.
Super.
Last thing is, don't buy the BS about well then what are
these poor congresspeople going to do if they can't invest in the market?
No they can. They can put it into blind trusts.
That way they don't know which stocks they're holding.
They don't know which industry it's in, which company it's in.
So blind trust could have other issues, but it would still be way better
than the current system that we have now.
Thanks for watching.
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