Invest like a Congress member (Encore)

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 30 December 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There are some new funds that track stock trading by members of Congress and their family. So we thought, why don't we get in on that?

Today on the show, we crack open the Planet Money Investment Jar to learn more about how our political leaders play the market, investing in funds tracking Democratic and Republican stock trades.

Whether Congressional stock trading should be limited is a hotly debated matter. So to test whether lawmakers are beating the market, Dartmouth College economist Bruce Sacerdote and his co-authors pitted lawmakers' stock picks against reindeer at a Christmas-styled theme park.

Trust us for this ride! It'll all make sense with some intriguing results.

This piece originally aired June 18, 2024.

Related listening:
Stock traders are trying to beat the market — by copying lawmakers
WTF is a Bitcoin ETF?(Apple / Spotify)
Planet Money's Toxic Asset
Planet Money Summer School: Investing

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:

See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, indicated listeners, Darien Woods here.
0:02.4	This week, we're running our favorite episodes of the year.
0:05.7	Today's episode explores how Democratic and Republican members of Congress invest, and whether
0:11.5	there are any good at it.
0:12.7	We'll have a small update for you at the end.
0:15.5	NPR.
0:16.3	NPR. This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
0:28.0	I'm Waylon Wong.
0:29.2	And I'm Diane Woods.
0:30.3	And we have NPR's congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh with us today.
0:34.1	She's dialing in from the House of Representatives.
0:36.6	Hi, Deirdre.
0:38.5	Hey there. Deirdre, the stock market is on a tear right now. And you reported this story that caught our attention
0:43.2	about a company that partnered with the financial firm subversive to allow everyday people to
0:48.4	invest like members of Congress. Right. So this was initially created by a trader who calls himself unusual whales.
0:56.0	Love the name. He has created two separate ETFs. Exchange traded funds. Right. That are
1:02.3	modeled on the trades by members of Congress. So he's using publicly available forms, disclosure forms by these lawmakers or their spouses and dependent children's trades to model one ETF called Nance, which is modeled on Democratic lawmakers' trades, named after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
1:24.1	So casual.
1:24.8	Nance.
1:25.2	And another ETAF called Cruz after Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
1:31.8	Very good.
1:32.4	To show how the two different parties' investment strategies are working in the market.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.