In February 2023, two exchange-traded funds launched that made it possible to invest directly in the stock-trading habits of members of Congress. NANC — a nod to Nancy Pelosi — tracks the trades of Democratic lawmakers. KRUZ — a reference to Ted Cruz — tracks Republicans. Together, they represent the most direct way for retail investors to systematically mirror congressional stock trading activity.
Since their launch, NANC has outperformed the S&P 500. KRUZ has not. Both have attracted significant media attention and genuine investor interest. And both raise important questions about whether congressional trading data translates into a durable investment edge — or whether the outperformance tells us less than it appears to.
What Are NANC and KRUZ?
Both ETFs are managed by Subversive Capital Advisor in partnership with data provider Unusual Whales, which compiles and analyzes congressional stock trade disclosures filed under the STOCK Act.
NANC is the Unusual Whales Subversive Democratic Trading ETF. It holds equities based on the STOCK Act disclosures of Democratic members of Congress and their immediate families, weighted by the total amount invested by Democratic members in each stock.
KRUZ is the Unusual Whales Subversive Republican Trading ETF. It does the same for Republican members.
Both ETFs carry an expense ratio of 0.74% — meaningfully higher than a simple index fund (the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF charges 0.03%) but comparable to other actively managed or thematic ETFs.
Because congressional trade disclosures arrive with up to a 45-day lag, both ETFs are necessarily trading on information that is weeks old by the time it enters the portfolio. The ETFs must also adjust continuously as new disclosures arrive and old ones become less relevant, resulting in relatively high portfolio turnover compared to passive index funds.
How the ETFs Construct Their Portfolios
The portfolio construction methodology for both ETFs is driven by STOCK Act disclosure data:
- Congressional trade disclosures are collected as they are filed
- Each stock is weighted based on the aggregate dollar amount invested by members of that party, adjusted for the value ranges reported in PTR filings
- Holdings are rebalanced as new disclosures arrive
- Stocks are removed from the portfolio when members sell or their disclosed positions age out
The result is a portfolio that reflects the aggregate equity preferences of the active traders within each party — not all 535 members of Congress, but the roughly 100–115 who actively trade individual stocks in any given year.
Performance: How Have They Done?
From their February 2023 launch through early 2026, the performance gap between the two ETFs has been significant.
NANC returned approximately 73% from inception through mid-2025, outperforming the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF by roughly 12 percentage points over the same period.
KRUZ returned approximately 41% over the same period — underperforming the S&P 500 by nearly 20 percentage points.
The gap between the two is substantial, and the explanation is relatively straightforward when you look at the portfolios.
Why NANC Has Outperformed: Sector Composition
NANC's outperformance is heavily explained by its portfolio composition rather than superior stock-picking skill. Democratic congressional traders have, in aggregate, held portfolios heavily weighted toward large-cap technology companies — Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta — which have dominated market returns over the period since the ETFs launched.
KRUZ's portfolio, reflecting Republican congressional trading preferences, has been more diversified across energy, financials, industrials, and value-oriented sectors — which have generally lagged large-cap technology over this period.
This sector allocation difference is likely driven by partisan investment preferences and constituency-related familiarity with industries, not necessarily by differential access to policy-relevant information.
The practical implication: NANC's outperformance tracks closely with the outperformance of large-cap technology stocks in general. Whether this reflects genuine congressional informational advantage or simply fortuitous sector concentration is genuinely ambiguous — and the distinction matters for whether the outperformance will persist.
The Core Question: Is There a Real Edge?
To assess whether NANC and KRUZ represent a durable investment strategy, you need to ask a more fundamental question: do members of Congress actually beat the stock market, and if so, why?
The academic evidence here is more complicated than the popular narrative suggests:
Pre-STOCK Act studies found significant outperformance — senators beating the market by 12% annually in the 1990s. But this period predated the disclosure requirements that now make the data public.
Post-STOCK Act research finds little or no aggregate outperformance. A 2022 study in the Journal of Public Economics found no evidence of stock-picking skill in the post-2012 period when using the full sample of congressional traders.
The 45-day lag problem is fundamental to both ETFs. Whatever informational advantage members of Congress may have when they make their trades, that advantage is at least partially dissipated by the time the disclosure is public and the ETF can act on it. The ETFs are, by construction, always behind.
The most recent leadership research suggests that any remaining edge is concentrated among the most powerful members — Speakers, floor leaders, committee chairs — not the broad congressional trading population that these ETFs capture.
What the ETFs Are Actually Measuring
One useful way to think about NANC and KRUZ is that they are not really measuring congressional informational advantage. They are measuring the aggregate equity preferences of active stock traders within each political party.
Democrats who actively trade individual stocks tend, in aggregate, to hold technology-heavy portfolios. Republicans who actively trade tend to hold more diversified, value-and-energy-oriented portfolios. These preferences likely reflect a combination of:
- Industry familiarity through committee assignments and constituency relationships
- Partisan ideological priors about which sectors will benefit from political tailwinds
- Individual financial backgrounds and investment philosophies
- Random variation in the small sample of active congressional traders
The ETFs are, in this sense, a novel form of thematic exposure — you are essentially buying the aggregate equity market view of politically active Democrats or Republicans, filtered through a disclosure system with a built-in lag.
The Practical Case Against
For investors considering NANC or KRUZ as portfolio holdings, several specific objections apply:
The expense ratio compounds the hurdle. At 0.74% annually, each ETF must outperform a free index fund by nearly a percentage point just to break even on fees. For NANC, which has historically outperformed by a wider margin, this is less critical. For KRUZ, which has underperformed, it adds injury to injury.
The track record is too short. Three years of data is not enough to distinguish skill from luck, especially in a market environment unusually favorable to technology stocks. NANC's outperformance would likely narrow considerably in a market regime where value or cyclical sectors outperform growth.
High turnover creates tax drag. The constant rebalancing required to track new congressional disclosures generates significant portfolio turnover — NANC's turnover has been reported at approximately 62%. In taxable accounts, this produces annual capital gains distributions that reduce after-tax returns.
The strategy is increasingly crowded. As more retail investors follow congressional trades through platforms, apps, and these ETFs, the residual edge — already limited by the 45-day lag — is further compressed. A strategy that outperformed when fewer people were watching it may not maintain that edge at scale.
The Practical Case For
In fairness, there are legitimate reasons why some investors might find NANC or KRUZ useful:
Novel thematic exposure. If you believe that Democratic or Republican legislative priorities will favor specific sectors over the next several years, these ETFs provide a ready-made proxy for those sector preferences.
Hedge against policy-driven sector risk. For a portfolio with concentrated exposure to specific industries, a position in the opposing party's ETF might provide some hedge against adverse legislative developments.
Transparency and entertainment value. Holding NANC or KRUZ gives you a quarterly window into the aggregate equity preferences of congressional traders — which has genuine informational value even if it does not translate into a performance edge.
A Better Alternative for Most Investors
For investors drawn to congressional trade data because they believe it contains investment-relevant information, we would suggest using the raw disclosure data directly rather than through an ETF. Our politician trades page lets you filter congressional disclosures by chamber, party, committee assignment, sector, and trade size — giving you access to the same underlying data the ETFs use, but with the ability to apply more nuanced filters.
Specifically, focusing on trades by committee members with direct jurisdiction over relevant sectors — as discussed in our article on which committees trade the most — and combining that with corporate insider buying data and superinvestor 13F disclosures produces a more targeted research input than the broad portfolio aggregation approach these ETFs use.
Summary
NANC and KRUZ are genuinely novel financial products that make congressional trading data accessible in ETF form. NANC has outperformed the S&P 500 since its 2023 launch; KRUZ has significantly underperformed. The performance gap is largely explained by sector composition — Democratic congressional traders have been heavily weighted toward large-cap technology stocks that dominated market returns over this period.
Whether this outperformance reflects genuine congressional informational advantage or simply fortuitous sector concentration is uncertain, and the three-year track record is too short to distinguish between the two. The 45-day disclosure lag, high expense ratio, significant portfolio turnover, and increasing strategy crowdedness are structural headwinds that make these ETFs difficult to recommend as core portfolio holdings for most investors.
For investors genuinely interested in using congressional trade data in their research, direct access to the underlying disclosures — filtered by committee, sector, and size — is likely to produce better results than the blunt aggregation approach these ETFs employ.