Politician Copycat Trading? A Path to Riches?

[james.hendrickson]

So supposedly members of congress and the senate have stock market returns that are .5 to 1 percent better than everyone else. This is because they have better knowledge about which kinds of federal legislation are going to impact specific sectors of the economy. They're also typically very high net worth and can hire the best advisors. In other words - they have a legal edge in the markets.

Are any of you guys doing copycat trading of major politicians? From what I'm reading its quite lucrative.

The only thing that gives me pause about these approaches to trading is there is a bull market happening in stocks right now - and pretty much everything works when the market overall is increasing. You'd have to wait for a bear market to really see if the strategy give you superior returns.

[ua_guy]

They also have access to inside information or they themselves are directly influencing deals via pandering to lobbyists, or say and tweet things which they know will have significant swing in the markets. The difference is, their trades are already planned, lined up. Yours/ours (the plebs) are trailing the market.

Go ahead, James, follow trading advice from someone on Twitter. Let us know how it works out.

[disneysteve]

This would only be useful if you could somehow access the same insider trading info they are using in real time. Otherwise, it's worthless. Finding out even a day later could defeat the purpose.

Insider trading only works if you're the insider doing it.