Unusual Whales focuses on market transparency most of all, highlighting unusual trades in the stock market.

Here are the highlights for this year.

UW highlights:

We made Rep. Josh Gottheimer flustered when directly mentioning his trades.
We drew comments from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
We made Speaker Nancy Pelosi flip from nonchalance and the belief that Congress should trade in 2021 to becoming pro-banning the practice. (Seriously, she was anti-bills before our public pressure, saying "it's a free market")
We made Dan Crenshaw admit that without trading: "You have no way to better yourself" as a Congressperson.
We saw the House Administration Committee hold a hearing on Congressional Stock Trading Practices, and quote Unusual Whales’ work.
We saw Democrat and Republican politicians work together to propose a bipartisan stock trading ban on themselves and their family members, which was not voted on during regular sessions.

Trading Differences

House Republicans disclosed 1000+ less trades in 2022 compared to the year before, from $388M to $292M. While House Democrats disclosed 1,000+ more trades in 2022 compared to 2021, from $434M to $371M.

The second and third highest volume traders were also from the House, two House Republicans:

Rep. Michael McCaul with over 1,600 transactions totaling up to $176M in 2022
Rep. Diana Harshbarger with over 1,000 transactions totaling up to $21M

Value Differences

Across the board, the House and Senate have reported lower amounts being bought and sold in 2022 than in 2021. Republicans dropped from 5209 to 4091 while Democrats dropped from 6569 to 7666.

Out of all Members that disclosed transactions, 61% of them disclosed trading less in total value in 2022 than in 2021.

Asset Differences

There was less investing in stocks and options in 2022 compared to the year prior. Stocks dropped from $535M to $371M, while Options dropped from $141M to $51M.

Government Securities and Agency Debt rose from $95M to $140M, and Other Securities rose from $19M to $64M.

Stock Sector Differences

The two notable industries that had larger investments in 2022 than 2021 was energy minerals ($9M to $12M) and consumer durables ($8M to $14M).

2022 Stats

Trends in Assets

Stocks were the asset class with the most activity in 2022 at $371M in total for democrats and republicans.

Trends in Stocks

Stock sell offs were well over $100M in 2022. However, House Democrats were also busy buying stocks, outpacing their Republican colleagues by about $40M. Republicans sold $99M and purchased $68M, while democrats sold $97M and purchased $107M.

January saw a total of $29M in stocks purchased by the House and $2.8M by the Senate. In December, the House only purchased $0.11M; in April, the Senate only purchased $0.3M. The majority of House sales at $32M happened in November, while the majority of Senate sales happened in June at $3.2M. The Senate did not sell anything in July.

Trends in Sectors

In 2022, the top sectors with the highest stock investments were:

Democrats - Technology Services ($31M), Electronic Technology ($21M), Finance ($18M), Consumer Services ($13M), and Health Technology ($12M)

Republicans - Technology Services ($31M), Industrial Services ($9.7M), Miscellaneous ($11M), Finance ($18M), and Electronic Technology($21M)

*( ) represent the total values of both republicans and democrats

In 2022, the top sectors with the highest stock sales were:

Democrats - Finance ($35M), Technology Services ($26M), Electronic Technology ($17M), Health Technology ($19M), Consumer Services ($9.4M)

Republicans - Industrial Services ($15M), Technology Services ($26M), Finance ($35M), Health Technology ($19M), Energy Minerals ($9.3M)

Unlike 2021, however, politicians experienced and performed varied trades instead of individual stocks.

Trends in Committees Trading

Committees are groups of lawmakers in Congress that are responsible for studying and discussing specific issues and making recommendations for legislative action.

House

Republican Mark Green bought and sold millions in oil and gas stocks throughout 2022. He traded up to $6M in the sector right before Russia invaded Ukraine and up to $14M during the rest of the year, selling more than buying at that point.
Reps. Ro Khanna, Michael McCaul, Mark Green, Diana Harshbarger and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi disclose such huge trades.
Finance became one of the largest purchased trends and miscellaneous stock sectors. That is, if you were on the Financial Services Committee, you bought finance-related stocks. That is, if you were Reps. Trey Hollingsworth, Josh Gottheimer, Cynthia Axne and Pete Sessions, members of the Financial Services Committee buying finance-related stocks.

Senate

Senator Tommy Tuberville traded stocks in Consumer Durables, tech, and Non-Energy Minerals. He is part of the Senate committees of Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, Armed Services, and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Senate Judiciary Committee members selling off tons of stock in Consumer Non-Durables was Senator Richard Blumenthal’s spouse and Kraft Heinz (KHC) and Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP).

Trends in Member Trading in Stock Sectors

House

Ro Khanna made 514 stock purchases (GOOGL, MSFT, META, CSCO, ADBE, etc.) in tech (up to $13.1M) and 454 sales transactions (GOOGL, MSFT, META, ADOBE, CRM, etc.) in tech (up to $12.4M).
Nancy Pelosi made 2 stock purchases (PYPL, GOOGL) in Electronic Technology (up to $10M) and 2 sales transactions (both in V) in Finance for up to $10M.
Ro Khanna made 420 stock purchases (TD, JPM, BAC, V, MMC, etc.) in Finance (up to $9.73M) and 388 sales transactions (V, JPM, BAC, MA, AIG, etc.) in Finance (up to $9.82M).
Mark Green made 20 stock purchases (ET, ENLC, AM, ETRN, PBFX, etc.) in Industrial Services (up to $7.68M) and 21 sales transactions (AM, ENLC, USAC, ET, PAA, etc.) in Industrial Services (up to $12.2M).
Michael McCaul made 104 stock purchases (EPAM, ACN, META, CDW, ADSK, etc.) in tech (up to $7.18M) and 124 sales transactions (GOOGL, META, MSFT, GPIN, SONY, etc.) in Technology Services (up to $8.86M).

Senate

Tommy Tuberville made 23 stock purchases in Technology Services (PYPL, MSFT, ECOM, CSCO, etc. for up to $3.22M), 11 stock purchases in Non-Energy Minerals, including infrastructure stocks (X, CLF, GOLD, GFI, SCCO, etc. for up to $1.4M), 12 stock purchases in Electronic Technology or semiconductor-related stocks (INTC, QCOM, SSYS, NVDA, MKSI, NOC for up to $1.29M), 17 sales transactions in Technology Services (ECOM, PYPL, MSFT, ACN, ADBE, etc. for up to $2.44M), and 8 sales transactions in Electronic Technology (QCOM, SSYS, INTC, NVDA, AAPL for up to $0.76M)
Richard Blumenthal made 2 stock purchases in Technology Services (GOOG, MSFT for up to $1M), 8 sales transactions in Consumer Non-Durables (KHC and KDP for up to $2.35M), and 20 sales transactions in Finance (all in RADI for up to $1.22M).
John Hickenlooper made 13 stock purchases in Consumer Services (mainly Liberty Media Corp and its subsidiaries such as FWONK, LBRDA, LBRDK, BATRK, LSXMK for up to $825K). Hickenlooper’s wife is a senior executive at Liberty Media. and 16 sales transactions in Consumer Services (again, all Liberty Media Corp stocks as well as Chipotle CMG for up to $1.85M).

Trends in Stocks

The most popular stock purchases were:

Apple, AAPL: $6.3M
Google, GOOG: $6.2M
Disney, DIS: $6.25M
Tesla, TSLA: $6.08M
Nvidia, NVDA: $5.68M

The most popular stock sales were:

Visa, V: $11.2M
Nvidia, NVDA: $6.35M
Exxon Mobil, XOM: $5.32M
Eli Lilly, LLY: $5.21M
Microsoft, MSFT: $3.4M

House

House democrats bought the majority of DIS, AAPL, TSLA, GOOG, NVDA, MSFT, and PYPL, while House republicans bought the majority of ET, DOW, EPAM, and T.

House democrats sold the majority of V, NVDA, GOOGL, MSFT, and AAPL, while House republicans sold the majority of XOM, LLY, AM, and AMZN. Both parties sold almost the same META and GOOGL stocks.

Senate

Senate democrats bought the majority of AMZN, APG, and GOOG, while Senate republicans bought the majority of MSFT, PYPL, INTC, X, ECOM, QCOM, and CLF stocks.

Senate democrats sold the majority of KHC, RADI, KDP, LSXMK, BATRK, and FWONK, while Senate republicans sold the majority of ECOM, PYPL, MSFT, and QCOM.

Less Options Trading in 2022

Josh Gottheimer was again the top options trader by total value traded at $23M purchased and $24M sold.

2022 Returns

We used two ways to compare returns to 2022. Congress outperformed the S&P 500 in 2022 on both of them.

First, here’s how we estimated Congressional stock returns. We had to do this because there currently isn’t enough information provided in financial disclosures to be 100% sure of what losses or gains were made for each trade.

Start off with a dataset of all congressional stock trades since 2020
Every sale transaction by a Member of Congress that took place before the first instance of a buy of that stock by that Member was removed
Every sale transaction was associated with the closest buy of that stock for each Member and their accounts (going back to 2020)
Every remaining buy trade was associated to the closest sale date of that stock by that Member
Every unrealized stock purchased since 2020 was included and the unrealized returns were calculated to December 30, 2022

To compare Congressional stock trades to SPY’s performance in 2022, we filtered on only stock trades made in 2022

Average Congressional Stock Returns

Democrats and Republicans beat the market! Unsurprising though as SPY has had its worst year since 2008 and ended off 2022 down nearly -20%. While the Democrats were down approximately -2%, their Republican colleagues were actually up approximately +0.4%.

We also used a SPY-matched trades approach that estimated what Congress’ returns would be if they ONLY traded SPY rather than their chosen company stocks. Using this approach, we also found that Democrats and Republicans beat SPY! Republicans came out on top again in this approach with +4.6%, while Democrats had +3.7%.

Weighted Average Returns

Republicans came out on top at +2.4% compared to SPY-matched weighted returns near 0%. Democrats, with their insanely huge trading amounts, actually did worse than our SPY comparison at -2.4%.

The Senate Republicans who traded had a 5.83% return, whereas the Senate Democrats who traded had an average return of 16.28%. The House Republicans, largely invested in oil + commodities in the beginning of the year, outperformed their House Democratic colleagues by 1.4 percentage points.

When we incorporate weighted average returns, Senate Democrats still beat their Senate Republican colleagues marginally, but with weights included, the huge difference disappears. House Republicans performed the best with a +2.1% weighted average return in 2022, beating Democrats and the SPY-matched weighted trades.

Returns by Politician

This approach would be if they traded SPY with their buy/sell instead of the individual shares they did.

House's Top 5

Mike Kelly - 239% (republican)
David Trone - 198.8% (democrat)
James Comer - 81% (republican)
Susie Lee - 64.6% (democrat)
Kathy Castor - 61.2% (democrat)

Senate's Top 5

Roger Marshall - 106.1% (republican)
John Hoeven - 56.6% (republican)
Ron Wyden - 31.9% (democrat)
Jerry Moran - 22.8% (republican)
Rand Paul - 21.5% (republican)

Congress' Top 5

Patrick Fallon - 51.6% (republican)
Debbie Schultz - 50.8% (democrat)
Susie Lee - 21.4% (democrat)
David Joyce - 13.6% (republican)
Gary Peters - 11.7% (democrat)

Best Trades of the Year

2022-04-19: House Democrat Josh Gottheimer purchased CCXI and sold on 2022-08-11 for an estimated gain of 140%
2022-01-24: House Republican Patrick Fallon purchased TWTR and sold on 2022-10-31 for an estimated gain of 60%
2022-01-21: House Republican Diana Harshbarger purchased LPLA and sold on 2022-10-24 for an estimated gain of 49%
2022-01-21: House Republican Diana Harshbarger purchased LPLA and sold on 2022-11-14 for an estimated gain of 43%
2022-01-19: House Republican Patrick Fallon purchased $TWTR and sold on 2022-10-31 for an estimated gain of 43%
2022-06-01: Senate Republican Tommy Tuberville purchased ECOM and sold on 2022-09-07 for an estimated gain of 61%
2022-06-29: Senate Republican Tommy Tuberville purchased PYPL and sold on 2022-08-11 for an estimated gain of 41%

Hot Topics

War Gains

Average returns on defense stocks in 2022, including disclosed trades since 2021.

Earl Blumenauer - 40% (democrat)
John Yarmuth - 39.4% (democrat)
Marjorie Greene - 35.5% (republican)
Carol Miller - 26.9% (republican)
John Curtis - 26.5% (republican)

As a House Foreign Affairs Committee member, Democrat Gerald Connolly has been a vocal supporter of sending aid to Ukraine, even co-sponsoring a House resolution on that initiative in March 2022. Throughout the pandemic, Connolly was selling off Leidos Holdings Inc stocks (LDOS). His most recent LDOS sale was in August 2022.

Democrat Kathy Manning also supported the same House resolution while holding Lockheed Martin stocks (LMT) bought in October 2021. In 2022, she disclosed that her spouse and herself (joint and own accounts) have traded RTX, LHX, NOC and LMT.

On February 22, House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene bought up to $15K in LMT (as well as Chevron, CVX and NextEra Energy, NEE) and then tweeted “War and rumors of war is incredibly profitable and convenient.” one day later.

Read more war trades.

Top Stock Purchased by Congress with the Largest Gains since Russia's Invasion

TELL - +57.31%
MOS - +38.66%
CLF - +35.8%
RUN - +33.59%
PTEN - +23.17%

Crypto Collapse

In 2021, we saw as many as 8 members of the House and Senate dip their toes into cryptocurrencies. They were: Senate Republicans Pat Toomey (retiring) and Cynthia Lummis; House Republicans Madison Cawthorn, Barry Moore, Mark Green, Michael McCaul, Michael Waltz, and House Democrat Marie Newman.

Total Value of Crypto Assets Traded by Congress in 2022

NVDA - $12.4M (majority sold)
V - $12.2M (majority sold)
PYPL - $6.2M (majority purchased)
SHOP - $1.6M (majority sold)
SQ - $1.5M (majority sold)

We also reported on crypto industry donations to midterm campaigns and the awkward position those incumbents or candidates were in following FTX’s collapse. Check out that post here.

Omicron Boosters

Average returns on mRNA Vaccine Stock PFE in 2022 (including stock trades disclosed since 2020).

Thomas Carper - 60.9% (democrat)
Mo Brooks - 41.5% (republican)
Earl Blumenauer - 24.4% (democrat)
Lois Frankel - 9% (democrat)
Kathy Manning - 4.5% (democrat)

Semiconductors and Competing with China

Biden signed the CHIPS Act back in August 2022. Speaker Nancy Pelosi completely divested from the industry (selling off her family’s 25,000 NVDA shares at a $341,365 loss) right before the House voted to pass the CHIPS Act. In September, she sold MU and NVDA calls at a loss as well.

In December, the Semiconductor Industry Association noted that the Act has spurred $200 billion in private investments for domestic manufacturing efforts.

Average Stock Returns on Semiconductor Stocks in 2022

Alan Lowenthal - 64.8% for Fabless (democrat)
Michael McCaul - 50.8% for Fabless and 11.9% for Fabs (republican)
Bob Gibbs - 19.4% (republican)
Thomas Suozzi - 18.8% (democrat)
Dan Sullivan - 17.1% (republican)

Note: Fabless stocks include NVDA, AMD, QCOM, ADI, NXPI, MXIM, SLAB; Fabs include INTC, TXN, MU, TSM, SWKS, IFNNY, WDC, STM.

Late Disclosures, Amendments and Skirting Detection Through Chicken Scratch

In 2022, we also saw an unprecedented number of amendments correcting details in past financial disclosures. Specifically, 164 trades from 2021 were amended in 2022.

House Republican Pat Fallon filed 112 amended trades, the most out of all Members of Congress in 2022. This was followed by House Democrat Tom Suozzi, who filed 41 trades with some dating back to 2017

Amount and Numbers of Trades Disclosed through Handwritten Filings in 2022

Ro Khanna - $150 M with 5,777 trades (democrat)
Michael McCaul - $180M with 1,683 trades (republican)
Diana Harshbarger - $21M with 1,067 trades (republican)
Kurt Schrader - $2.7M with 150 trades (democrat)
Richard Blumenthal - $26M with 87 trades (democrat)

In 2022, we saw 10 House Representatives file late disclosures. House Republican Chris Jacobs filed 80 late trades ranging between 53 to 70 days late. However, the worst offender for supremely late disclosures goes to now former Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who filed 22 late trades with some of them being 331 days late.

The unfortunate reality is that a $200 fine is not a strong enough deterrent.

Unusual Trades and Politicians Shorting the Economy

ECOM, ChannelAdvisor Corp, was announced to be acquired by CommerceHub on September 6, 2022 for $23.10 per share. It jumped 55% in share price on the acquisition news. Tommy Tuberville had been purchasing ECOM since 03/08/2022, purchasing a total of $575,000 of ECOM. He bought $250,000 on 07/14. Tubberville’s ECOM average purchase price was approximately $15.00, meaning he had a 54% return on his investment this year alone, turning approximately $575,000 into ~$900000. You can see as the acquisition date came closer, he purchased more ECOM, and in larger sizes.
Alan Lowenthal actively traded PSQ, a bearish ETF called ProShares short QQQ, around 80k USD in total. This means Alan Lowenthal shorted the US economy. He bought on Jan 14th for around $11.41, and sold on 02-24 at $12.60, for an around 10% gain in shorting the US economy.
Alan Lowenthal was not the only shorting the US economy, numerous Congress people did it. For example, Senator Thomas Carper bought up to $200k in bearish ETFs before the huge rate hikes and CPI data from the federal reserve. He sits on the Senate Finance Committee. On October 4th, Senator Thomas Carper has sold his short on the US economy, with the ProShares Short S&P500, $SH. He just reported selling up to $80,000 shares on Sept 19, originally purchased March 2022. He made around 4% on the sale. His short positions were up approximately 5-20% on the SPY, as well as his PSQ positions. Carper’s PSQ, and SH sales were incredible, as were his buying of SPY at the bottom of the covid crash.

Committee Conflicts in Congress

Certain Committees and members have outperformed the market by a significant margin
Certain individual committee members and even committee chairs and ranking members have made returns in the hundreds of percent on investments in companies that operate within their committees’ jurisdiction
Members make trades often in the individual sectors before a large decision which directly influences the sector itself

Committee Conflicts Report was completed on Sept 1st, 2022. Read more here.

Lobbying

Lobbying in US politics was a $2B+ industry
Lobbying companies were more likely to be invested in by Congress than nonlobbying companies.
Lobbying companies outperformed nonlobbying companies, both in average and in Congressional portfolios.

You can read our full lobbying report here.

The following are some examples of unusual associations in 2021 and 2022:

House Republican Andrew Garbarino, who sits on the Committee on Small Business, bought and sold up to $15k in OneSpaWorld Holdings ($OSW) stocks, which conveniently lobbied the government on “Small Business” issues. He sold for +1.05%.
House Democrat Josh Gottheimer, who sits on the Committee on Financial Services, bought up to $30k and sold up to $15k in BHP Group Limited ($BHP) stocks, which lobbied the government on “Financial Institutions/Investments/Securities” and “Taxation/Internal Revenue Code” among many other issues. He also traded HCA Healthcare ($HCA) several times in 2021, which also lobbied on “Taxation/Internal Revenue Code”, “Budget/Appropriations”, and “Insurance”. By the end of 2021, his most recent purchase of up to $15k had gained +40%.
House Democrat Lloyd Doggett, who sits on both Committees on the Budget, and on Ways and Means (which together have jurisdictions over government spending, revenue and taxation), bought Procter & Gamble Co. ($PG) stocks four times throughout 2021. PG lobbied the government on “Taxation/Internal Revenue Code”. Taking his earliest purchase date, he was up 30.5% by the end of 2021.

What About Pelosi?

We wrote entire reports on her trading style, as well as created a series of free ETFs to follow her moves.

Here are all of Pelosi’s reported open positions:

GOOGL at $1,000,0 - $5,000,000 with an entry price of 120.15 and current price of 88.23. Appr return of -26.6.
MSFT at $1,000,0 - $5,000,000 with an entry price of 230 and current price of 239.82. Appr return of 4.27.
AB at $500,0 - $5,000,000 with an entry price of 36 and current price of 34.37. Appr return of 4.53.
TSLA at $1,000,0 - $5,000,000 with an entry price of 166.67 and current price of 123.48. Appr return of -25.304.
FB/META at $250,000 - $500,000 with an entry price of 222 and current price of 120. Appr return of -45.9.

2023 Outlook

Although there were several bipartisan proposals to ban stock trading led by prominent politicians, none of them were passed in 2022.

Unusual Whales, notably, also has collaborated with Subversive Capital to launch two ETFs that will allow you to trade alongside Congress. Unusual Whales does not receive any funding or fees from the ETF, nor any of the management fee from its use once live.

We have shown that in 2022, politicians yet again beat the market. Until there is change, we will continue to fight for market transparency in 2023.

We hope you will join us, unusually.

To see a database of all trades, as well as our old reports check unusualwhales.com/politics.

The full report can be seen here.