Here's a business model for you: watch what members of Congress buy and sell, then let regular investors copy those trades. Turns out, that idea is worth about $1 billion in managed assets.
Autopilot, an app that tracks stock trades by prominent individuals, just secured $8 million in funding to expand its operations. Founded by Chris Josephs, the app was originally inspired by Rep. Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) uncanny ability to pick winning stocks, and it's clearly struck a chord with retail investors looking for an edge.
Following the Money
Josephs originally built Autopilot as a simple tool to get notifications when friends made stock trades. Then he started paying attention to Pelosi's trades. What he noticed was remarkable: her timing consistently beat the performance of top hedge fund managers, according to The New York Post. That observation led him to create the Pelosi Tracker social media account, which he still runs under the handle @pelositracker.
The app lets users either track or automatically mirror the stock trades of prominent investors and members of Congress. It's been downloaded three million times, which suggests a lot of people are curious about what their elected representatives are buying and selling.
The Retirement Problem
With Pelosi's retirement approaching, Autopilot faces an interesting challenge. Once she stops trading, the app will stop tracking her. The company plans to move the approximately $500 million that people have invested following her trades into a "general insider trading" portfolio. That portfolio will track other politicians like Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).
Josephs plans to use the fresh funding to hire more engineers and marketers, and to expand beyond San Francisco into New York City. Despite his app's namesake retiring, he's keeping the @pelositracker name, presumably because it's already built a following.
Beyond building a business, Josephs argues that Pelosi's trading success has exposed just how murky congressional trades can be. He's pushing for more transparency and faster reporting requirements for these trades, which currently can be disclosed weeks after they happen.
The app's success points to a broader trend: retail investors increasingly want to see what the insiders are doing. Whether that's a path to better returns or just an expensive way to follow the herd remains to be seen, but clearly there's demand for the service.
