1/2 How to spot (it's quite easy!)

• Some members of Congress disclose trades much later than others, or even disclose their purchases and sales on the same day. Though it's easy to spot them :)
• How? Compare their total returns with their delay-adjusted returns. Delay-adjusted means "what if the trade was made on the day of disclosure". Then look at the gap.
• And then? If the gap is wide enough (I'll provide examples below), that politician is not a reliable signal.

2/2 Let's do some examples

• Lisa C. McClain: 1/5, beware!. +336.4% over the last 3Y, but +67.5% delay-adjusted. There is a huge gap. This is caused by her reporting purchases & sales on the same day.
• Ro Khanna: 5/5. +137.7% over the last 3Y, +138.6% delay-adjusted. They're pretty close.
• Ashley Moody: 5/5. +231.8% over the last 3Y, +279.5% delay-adjusted. Delay-adjusted performance being better is totally fine :)
• Tommy Tuberville: 4/5. +242.7% over the last 3Y, +182.3% delay-adjusted. There is a gap but the delay-adjusted performance is strong. Plus, over the last 6M it is +72.3%/+71.5%, so his delays have improved a lot this year.

What happened?

• US Department of Energy is planning a $4B loan to Vistra Energy to upgrade their nuclear reactors given higher datacenter demand.
• Peter Thiel's fund Thiel Macro bought $59M of VST in Q2, forming 14.1% of their portfolio.
• Trump owns ~$438k of VST (-12.1%) while Pelosi owns $1.1M (-16.4%). VST now trades below their entry prices.
• One of Vistra's lobbyists served at the EPA during Trump's first term as the agency's liaison to Congress and state governments.

What does it mean?

• S&P 500 gained +23% on average in the year after midterms with a Republican president and split Congress. (per Morgan Stanley)
• With midterms coming in November, recent polling suggests a split Congress as Democrats are expected to win the House.
• Defense, tech, financial, healthcare and energy stocks have performed best, as a gridlock implies policy stability on major issues.
• This ratio is 95% for the US government's portfolio, 72% for all Congress members, 61% for Trump, and 50.3% for S&P 500.

What happened?

• Today, Senate blocked a bill that would prevent members of Congress and their household from buying new stocks.
• Democrats found the bill "toothless", because it excluded the President & VP from the restrictions.
• Trump supported this bill and had urged Congress to pass it last year.
• Lawmakers who support a congressional stock trading ban are up +29.6% in 2026, vs. +22.3% for others.

The chart is from insidercat.com/trading-ban-supporters

What's happening?

• US and China released details of their new $30B reciprocal tariff deal following the Trump-Xi summit.
• China committed to buying 10M metric tons of US coal in 2027 and another 10M in 2028.
• China also agreed to cut tariffs on US corn, wheat, sorghum, meat, dairy and other agricultural products.
• Trump owns $1.1M of related stocks (+21.4%), while members of Congress own ~$550K (+55.9%) of related stocks. See top-level comment for details

Here's some context:

• Senate voted 49-50 against a resolution requiring Trump to end hostilities with Iran.
• Sen. John Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote against the resolution.
• Fetterman's portfolio is up +308% since 2023, tripling S&P 500 returns.
• He was early on DELL (+1,197%), WDC (+1,747%), and MU (+236.4%)

Source: https://insidercat.com/live-portfolio/F000479

Details:

• Yesterday, US proposed a $10B fund to rebuild pipelines, refineries, and oil & gas export infrastructure in the region.
• Another goal is to build infrastructure to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.
• Trump owns stock in oilfield services companies that might potentially benefit from this.
• He's up +0.96% so far in a day, so the stocks haven't moved much.

Data is from insidercat.com

What happened?

• The government made deals with Pfizer (PFE) and Eli Lilly (LLY) to lower US drug prices in exchange for tariff protection and other benefits.
• Newly released documents show the deals include Pfizer sharing its revenue with the US gov't from sales abroad and loopholes for GLP-1 drugs (like Mounjaro, Lilly's Ozempic variant).
• Trump owns $7.7M of LLY (+8.4%) and $2.8M of PFE (+16%), so his positions haven't moved much yet.
• Trump has 28 bullish mentions of LLY since 2025, making it his 7th most frequently mentioned stock. LLY is up +22.6% on average since the mentions.

What happened?

• DoW commits $450M to The Elmet Group to establish a domestic tungsten supply chain. Pentagon gets stock & warrants worth up to a 19.9% stake in ELMT in exchange.
• ELMT had a market cap of ~$500M before the announcement on September 14. It's now up +22.9% in 2 days.
• Tungsten is widely used in armor-piercing ammunition, missiles, submarines and other military systems. The US has no domestic commercial tungsten mining.
• ELMT builds tungsten and molybdenum components for defense and nuclear applications.
• An ELMT subsidiary also received a government contract worth up to $2B to supply tungsten for the US National Defense Stockpile.

Trump is against OpenAI & Anthropic's proposal to slow down AI progress.

• 35% of Trump's stock portfolio is in AI-related companies. His top 5 positions are AAPL, NVDA, AVGO, AMZN, GOOGL.
• Dems in Congress are also heavily exposed to tech. Their top 5 positions are NVDA, AVGO, PANW, BE and GOOGL, vs. BMO, JPM, PRU, PUK and AESI for Republicans.
• Elon Musk (xAI, Grok) and Demis Hassabis (Google Deepmind) also support slowing the pace of frontier AI development.

What's happening?

• In October 2025, the White House disclosed the corporate donors funding Trump’s new 90,000 sqft ballroom.
• An equal-weighted portfolio of corporate donors has returned +45.1% since then, vs. 15.4% for S&P 500.
• The corporate donors in total have received more than $50.4B in federal contracts since then. ($6.6B in total excl. Lockheed Martin)
• Without MU, the returns would still have been +28.2% (almost double the S&P 500).
• The project cleared a major court challenge on August 31, and Reuters could see construction going on as of September 8.

Source: insidercat.com

What's happening?

• Due to conflicts in the Middle East, US refineries are already running at near maximum levels, reaching up to 98% utilization.
• In a recent meeting with Trump, refinery executives suggested using federal money to expand existing refineries or improve their efficiency rather than building new ones.
• The Defense Production Act gives the President broad powers to provide financial incentives & resources to companies to expand production.
• Trump owns stock in three major refineries: Valero (VLO, $1.4M, +1.29% since news), Phillips 66 (PSX, $1.4M, +0.37% since news), Marathon (MPC, $1.3M, +0.89% since news)

Given your interest in the How to copy-trade politicians and How-to copy-trade Trump guides, I wanted to do this as the next step. I mainly use AI as a clerk to put together data and recent news rather than letting it decide what I do with my money. I like making the final decision.

1/3 Prerequisites

• You need a Claude subscription ($20/month plan is enough). Doesn't have to be Claude but it integrates well with data services.
• You need a data service that can connect to your AI tool for Congress and Trump's trades & positions.
• You don't have to be technical. Your AI tool can help you with setting things up.

2/3 Getting started

• Connect your data service to Claude, perfect if they support MCP connections. Your AI tool will automatically talk to the data then.
• You can ask for "Trump trades that haven't moved yet", "stocks where Congress trades overlap", and all that. Feel free to get creative based on your goals :)
• I have Claude analyze recent news every day and list related Trump, US Gov, Congress positions plus other relationships (suppliers, corporate donors of Trump, etc.).

3/3 Helpful prompts

• I've put the two prompts I use every day below in the comments section in a format you can easily copy and paste. The first prompt helps with getting related news, and the second one finds connections to Trump, the administration, and/or Congress for a given news story.
• If you have any preferences in the visuals your tool makes, feel free to adjust the second prompt to your liking.
• Additionally, you can copy & paste the guides I've linked in the post so your tool knows what to look at.

What happened?

• The Trump administration is easing environmental rules and expediting permits to help AI data centers rapidly deploy natural gas turbines and on-site power plants.
• GE Vernova (GEV) and Caterpillar (CAT) are among the major suppliers of gas turbines.
• Trump owns $6.6M of stock in Caterpillar, and $1.5M of stock in GE Vernova.
• Caterpillar donated to Trump's White House Ballroom and sponsored his Trump Accounts project.
• Elon Musk's xAI has also deployed portable natural gas turbines to power its data centers, and faced regulatory scrutiny because of that.

What happened?

• With the oil deal, US government took a 35% stake in NABEP at effectively no cost. NABEP is Venezuela’s largest non-state oil producer after Chevron.
• NABEP controls 17 oil projects with 65B barrels of reserves and plans to invest up to $100B to expand production. NABEP itself says billions will be spent with US suppliers.
• While NABEP is private, some of the companies supplying its expansion are publicly traded.
• Known names are HP (+2.4%, Trump owns), PTEN (+3.3%, Trump owns), PDS (-0.4%). They haven't moved much since the deal.
• I'm watching SLB. Nothing confirmed yet, but NABEP wants to grow production 5x to 1M+ bpd. This will need expansion in oilfield services. SLB is already returning to Venezuela.
• I wouldn’t be surprised to see the US government invest more in this supply chain too, just like they did with metals/mining. (e.g. USAR, MP, TMQ, LAC)

Source: insidercat.com

What happened?

• US officials have met with mining companies about investing in Venezuela. They're considering an executive order on critical minerals.
• Venezuela potentially has large deposits of gold, iron ore, bauxite, and nickel, plus identified deposits of copper, tungsten and other minerals. The estimates are old and mostly unverified.
• Related companies in Trump's stock portfolio: Newmont (NEM, $5m, +37.4%), Freeport-McMoRan (FCX, $0.7m, +25%). They're in copper and gold mining.
• Related stocks owned by Congress: FCX (copper/gold), NEM (gold), SCCO (copper), AA (aluminum & bauxite)

All the signals we track in the copy-trading Trump guide are about being close to the administration. So why not analyze Trump's foreign trips and the CEOs attending them? Let's start with Trump's most recent China trip (12-18 May 2026).

1/2 Why it matters & potential

• Purpose: Presidents take CEOs on foreign trips to help American companies make deals and expand to new markets. The companies get the negotiating power of the US government behind them.
• Proximity: Companies want to be close to the administration, and this is one of the strongest reasons. It is a solid signal showing what companies want, and it doesn't have a disclosure delay.
• Potential: If we get good results from this, we can expand it to all foreign trips, be it Japan, Europe, LATAM, UAE, etc.

2/2 Results

• The strongest performers were the ones who went to China with a win. The "winners portfolio" is up +15%, while an equal-weighted basked is up +6.6% (S&P 500: +4.6%).
• E.g. China had already lifted Illumina's import ban 6 weeks before the trip. Mastercard had acquired its license in Feb in a JV with a Chinese company.
• Overlaps: Trump has positions worth +$1M in 12/16 companies on the list. 13/16 have also sponsored Trump or one of his projects.

What happened?

• On Friday, State Dept approved two potential defense sales to Saudi Arabia. Both pending approval by Congress.
• The deals include $5B of JDAM-ER precision guided munitions (Boeing), and $750M of AGT-1500 tank engines (Honeywell).
• Trump owns ~$0.7M worth of both in total, with buys in March during the Iran War.
• There may be more to come as the US ramps up munitions and drone production. Iran War has depleted stockpiles, and the US allies in the Gulf will need to replenish theirs.