How much return can you get if you copy congressmen’s trades as they were disclosed? Which congressmen to copy?

We know some congressmen are super good at trading stocks. They can get massive gains from their insider knowledge.

But can WE copy their trades to get rich OURSELVES?

The point is the day their trades were disclosed is usually many days after the day they made the trades. So there’s a delay if we copy them. But how much does the delay matter? If we copy the trades as they were disclosed, how much returns can we get?

To answer this question, I used Claude Code to vibe code a website: https://capitol-alpha.com/

Here I simulated portfolios that copied congressmen’s trades as they were disclosed. Before anything is disclosed, portfolios were all-in SP500. As soon as some trades were disclosed, the simulated portfolios bought the stocks, whose weights are based on consultative exposures. For instance, if Nancy Pelosi has disclosed 10M trades in the past 3 years, then a 1M buy of NVDA would means rebalancing her portfolio to 10% in NVDA.

You can see the ranking among all politicians in both chambers. To my surprise, Nancy Pelosi is only ranked the 3rd based on this algorithm. The NO. 1 performer only bought one ticket RNMBY on May 27, 2024. Lots of interesting patterns to dig. Maybe you can find whose trades to follow after some digging.