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Want to win big like Nancy Pelosi's husband? A new website tracks what politicians and their families are trading

US politicians often place major bets on Wall Street.
Angela Weiss/Getty Images
  • A new online service allows users to easily track what stocks and securities politicians are buying and selling.
  • Data company 2iQ said it wants investors to be able to clearly see how legislators are playing the market.
  • Some politicians, such as Nancy Pelosi and her husband, are active market participants that make big gains.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul Pelosi shot onto the pages of the financial press in June after a multi-million dollar win from trading Alphabet stock options.

Now, financial data company 2iQ has launched an in-depth service called Capitol Trades that allows users to easily track how senators, representatives and their family members are playing the markets.

Legislators have to report what securities they buy and sell, thanks to the 2012 Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act – known as the STOCK Act.

German company 2iQ's Capitol Trades service, launched Monday, has brought together all of those filings in an enormous, free database that lets users see what politicians are trading and filter by asset class.

Search "crypto" and users can see that Alabama Congressman Barry Moore made a risky bet buying dogecoin in June, since which time the price has dropped.

Read more: Brian Barish's fund has returned 720% to investors over 2 decades by combining the best of growth and value stock-picking. He detailed for us 4 of his highest-conviction bets for the future.

2iQ said it built the tool as it believes investors should be able to benefit from seeing what US politicians are buying and selling – from small players like Moore to Congressional whales like Nancy and Paul Pelosi. It also said it wants to increase transparency around politicians' trading, which is controversial and which many say should be more strictly controlled.

"While working on the data, I often stumbled upon trades where a politician bought the dip, buying at the perfect time, right before the price started rising. Or sold just before a stock started to go down. The data set undoubtedly has very valuable insights to help you make smart investment decisions," Muhammad Huzaifa Waseem, team lead at 2iQ Research, said.

To be sure, 2iQ isn't the first company to think of this: other services such as Smart Insider and Senate Stock Watcher do similar things. But 2iQ's pitch is that it has created a detailed and searchable service, with extra analytics on top.

Capitol Trades gives a sense of the way the US's leaders like to play the market, which appears to be a lot like other retail investors. For instance, the most-purchased sector over the last year has been information technology, with Apple, Facebook and Microsoft among the most bought and sold names.