How Do Politician Trading Apps Work?

In recent years, a massive wave of "Politician Trade Copying" apps has emerged. Platforms such as Autopilot and dub claim that you can copy a politician's trades one-to-one, with massive returns of up to 123% within 3 years for certain portfolios. ETFs with the same agenda have gained a lot of traction as well, with Subversive ETFs releasing the Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF (NANC), and

The Unusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETF (GOP) to major success, with both funds having a combined $355.28m in Net Assets. It is no secret that insider trading runs rampant in Washington, and clearly, there is a high demand to profit from it. We are not here to discuss the presence of this issue, as we know it exists; rather, we are here to discuss how these apps and ETFs work, and how they can fail.

How do these apps work?

An important aspect is that these apps are not themselves individual brokers, as they require you to pair your current broker. Instead, they merely act as an agent to execute these trades on your platform. They essentially function as your own personal portfolio manager. Once a given portfolio is selected, the app will automate every single action related to the portfolio. They will buy and sell in accordance with the overall portfolio. The idea is simple: select a portfolio, pay a small fee, watch your money grow. A financial pitch as old as time. Dub refers to the entire process as simply "copy trading". These platforms are allowed to exist as they operate under strict SEC (Securites exchange commision) and FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) regulation. They function as what's called a dual registrant, meaning they're both a registered broker-dealer and investment advisor. Furthermore, through SPIC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation), each account is insured up to $500,000.

How do they get their information?

Passed in 2012, the STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) aimed to eradicate the existence of insider trading in Congress. This law requires that officials publicly file any trading activity valued over $1,000. They do so through Periodic Transaction Reports; these filings are publicly posted by the House of Representatives and the Senate. They can be found here; however, they are often tedious to look through. The company QuiverQuantitative provides a much clearer UI, better user experience, and more information. The process for apps like AutoPilot and Dub is very simple. They just scrape the official data the instant it releases, sort through it for the ticker and dollar range under which the trade was made. From there, this trade can be sent out to every account under which this specific portfolio is utilized. It's that simple and can be replicated by any individual. The entire product that these apps sell is not their information, but the speed and convenience at which they can apply this information.

The major flaw in this system.

One piece of information that was very purposely left out of the previous paragraph was the speed at which politicians must file that they executed these trades, and the fines that occur if they fail to cooperate. The act provides officials a whopping 45 days to report transactions. That's half a fiscal quarter's worth of unregulated market movements. For example, on April 2nd 2025, President Donald Trump announced "Reciprocal Tariffs", which caused the markets to sharply decline. Between April 3rd and the 8th, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene hard bought the dip, with total values of $300,000.  On April 9th, Trump then posted that "it's a great time to buy", right before announcing a 90-day tariff pause, causing the S&P 500 to have one of its best single-session days since 2008. Representative Jared Moskowitz also made a conveniently well-timed trade on the 7th. This quick spree of trades occurred under the 45-day mandate under which politicians must make their trades public, essentially invalidating the entire purpose of the Periodic Transaction Reports.

Another prominent issue is the brackets under which the dollar value of each trade is categorized. Brackets are broad and labeled as A-J:

A: $1,001 – $15,000

B: $15,001 – $50,000

C: $50,001 – $100,000

D: $100,001 – $250,000

E: $250,001 – $500,000

F: $500,001 – $1,000,000

G: $1,000,001 – $5,000,000

H: $5,000,001 – $25,000,000

I: $25,000,001 – $50,000,000

J: Over $50,000,000

The problem from a trading app's perspective is that the exact number of shares is never disclosed. In the latter bracket, there is a difference of millions of dollars. These differences can throw off the weights of entire portfolios, making them completely inaccurate. Finally, there's the issue of the fine. The penalties for filing late are a mere $200 and are traditionally waived. With such a minuscule fine, the idea of trading on insider information is extremely alluring; furthermore, officials can easily bypass the 45-day filing date with minimal punishment.

Are these apps effective?

On top of the already established 45-day filing window, these individual apps often experience delays between when the information is published and when these trades are executed. On autopilot, this delay window can be viewed when selecting a portfolio. On the side of the ETFs, from 2023-2025, NANC returned around 73% while GOP returned 41%. Both of these are, in fact, great numbers, with NANC outpacing the market by around 30% and GOP underperforming by around 4%. However, more recently, NANC has struggled to merely stay at pace with the market. So what happened to these big triple-digit numbers that are advertised? These numbers are, in fact, real numbers. However, they are curated through very specific portfolios with values that do not take into account the real-world delays that occur.

In summary, the product that these companies sell you isn't their information, which can be accessed by anyone for free, but instead the speed and convenience at which they give it to you. But the value of that information is already minuscule by the time the trade is executed on your account.