Washington’s Last Scandal Exposed

“You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.”

– Harry Truman

February 28, 2025— Chris Josephs didn’t set out to expose one of the most lucrative investment strategies in America. He just wanted to make money. And, as it turns out, the best traders in the country aren’t sitting on Wall Street — they’re walking the halls of Congress.

Josephs, 29, co-founded an app that allows users to track the stock trades of U.S. lawmakers. He was recently on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, detailing how he arrived at his “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” approach: Instead of lamenting the legalized corruption of congressional stock trading, he decided to profit from it.

According to Josephs, Nancy Pelosi alone has outperformed the S&P 500 by 50% since 2021. If that sounds outrageous, consider this: The lawmakers who write and regulate the rules of our economy are somehow, miraculously, also its most consistently successful investors.

Pelosi, for her part, has been quite clear. “It’s a free market,” she says. But that definition of “free” seems to apply exclusively to her stock portfolio — not, say, to the businesses subject to the regulations she helps craft. Because when Congress controls the money spigot, principles of fiscal restraint have a funny way of vanishing.

Tucker Carlson pointed out something even more fundamental: The money Congress throws around doesn’t come from some magical, self-replenishing pot. It comes from taxpayers. Or, failing that, from debt — piled high and financed by tomorrow’s taxpayers. So when members of Congress personally profit from deciding where those dollars go, the idea that they’re objective legislators goes right out the window.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. This is corruption. And if Congress were truly interested in stopping it, they could pass a law requiring all lawmakers to move their assets into blind trusts or limit their holdings to index funds and U.S. bonds. But don’t hold your breath.

The odds of meaningful reform are about the same as the odds of Congress imposing term limits on itself. Or the full, unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files being made public. In other words, it’s not happening.

So, what’s the takeaway? You could shake your fist at the system. Or, like Josephs, you could recognize reality and use it to your advantage.

The Nancy Pelosi Stock Tracker isn’t just about watching corruption unfold in real-time. It’s about identifying where the big money is flowing, which industries Congress is quietly betting on, and which companies are about to benefit. If you’re an investor, that’s information you can’t afford to ignore.

Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan

P.S. To benefit yourself, what you need is an accurate source of information Congress is trading on. It’s going to be even more important as Musk and DOGE continue to romp around the deep state.

We’ve got a man with his finger on the pulse of Washington scuttlebutt.

The Wall Street Journal says Andrew Zatlin is “knocking it out of the park,” and Bloomberg has ranked his forecasting as #1 in their terminal many times over.

The Washington Post said during the Biden administration, Zatlin’s forecasts predicted economic data more accurately than the government’s own institutions…

Anticipating President Trump’s State of the Union address on March 4, 2025, Zatlin has identified three stocks he believes will directly benefit from the information flowing around the Capitol’s marbled halls.

Yesterday, we previewed Zatlin’s proprietary political trading tracker. If you missed it, we arranged for a replay, right here.

Please send your comments to addison@greyswanfraternity.com. Thank you in advance.

“You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.”

– Harry Truman

So, what’s the takeaway? You could shake your fist at the system. Or, like Josephs, you could recognize reality and use it to your advantage.

Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan

We’ve got a man with his finger on the pulse of Washington scuttlebutt.

The Wall Street Journal says Andrew Zatlin is “knocking it out of the park,” and Bloomberg has ranked his forecasting as #1 in their terminal many times over.

The Washington Post said during the Biden administration, Zatlin’s forecasts predicted economic data more accurately than the government’s own institutions…

Yesterday, we previewed Zatlin’s proprietary political trading tracker. If you missed it, we arranged for a replay, right here.

Please send your comments to addison@greyswanfraternity.com. Thank you in advance.

Relative to GDP, the net international investment claim on the U.S. economy was 20% in 2003. It had swollen to 65% by 2023. Practically every type of American company, bond, or real estate asset now has some degree of foreign ownership.

But it’s even worse than that. As the federal deficit has pumped up the GDP figures, and made a larger share of the economy dependent on government spending, the quality and sustainability of GDP have deteriorated. So, foreigners, to the extent they are paying attention, are accumulating claims on an economy that has been eroded by inefficient, government-directed spending and “investments.” Why should foreign creditors maintain confidence in the integrity of these paper claims? Only to the extent that their economies are even worse off. And in the case of China, that’s probably true.

As global government interest expense climbed, gold quietly followed it higher. The IIF estimates that interest costs on government debt now run at nearly $4.9 trillion annually. Over the same span, gold prices have tracked that burden almost one-for-one.

Silver has recently gone along for the ride, with even more enthusiasm.

Since early 2023, Japan’s 10-year government bond yield has risen roughly 150 basis points, touching levels not seen since the 1990s.

Over that same period, gold prices have surged about 135%, while silver is up roughly 175%. Zoom out two years, and the divergence becomes starker still: gold up 114%, silver up 178%, while the S&P 500 gained 44%.

According to the American Association of Individual Investors, the average retail investor has about a 70% allocation to stocks. That’s well over the traditional 60/40 split between stocks and bonds. Even a 60/40 allocation ignores real estate, gold, collectibles, and private assets.

A pullback in the 10% range – which is likely in any given year – will prompt investors to scream as if it’s the end of the world.

Our “panic now, avoid the rush” strategy is simple.

Take tech profits off the table, raise some cash, and focus on industry-leading companies that pay dividends. Roll those dividends up and use compounding to your overall portfolio’s advantage.

In a healthy economy, production and consumption communicate constantly. If a company builds something useful, customers respond by buying it. If they overbuild, inventories pile up and prices fall, sending a signal to slow down.

AI infrastructure, by contrast, is being built largely on faith. Companies are scaling up compute power without clear signs of sustainable demand. Unlike oil and gas, where prices adjust second-by-second, AI companies operate in a fog. They release tools, collect usage stats, and hope that paid conversions will follow.