00:00Hey, Zingers, it's Dan Leach, and I am so pleased to be joined by Mike Venuto, the co-founder
00:07and CIO of Tidal Financial Group.
00:09Great to see you, Mike.
00:10Great to talk to you and your audience, Dan.
00:12Hey, it's exciting to have you here, and I want to talk about, you know, the fact you
00:15offer two ETFs, NANC and KRUZ, that track the trading patterns of Congress.
00:23Why is that a good strategy?
00:25Yeah, so I work for a company, or co-founded a company called Tidal Financial Group, and
00:31we help people launch and grow ETFs.
00:34In these two, we're working with a company called Subversive that's partnered with Unusual
00:39Whales, the very well-known Twitter account.
00:42And the essential concept of these two ETFs is to take the information that congressional
00:49members, you know, congressmen and women and Senate participants, whenever they get
00:55information or are on a committee or happen to know something that maybe the rest of us
01:01don't know, unlike somebody in the world of finance, they're legally allowed to act on
01:07that, as long as they disclose it within 45 days.
01:12So the concept here is to take that information that they're using to profit and put it into
01:18two different funds, one that tracks the ideas or investments of the Democratic Congress
01:26folks, that's ticker NANC for Nancy.
01:29You can take that to the next level if you want.
01:32And the other tracks the congressional members of the Republican Party, which is ticker KRUZ
01:39for Cruz.
01:40Yeah, you can take that to the next level as well, on both sides, absolutely fascinating
01:44stuff.
01:45So Michael, what are the key distinctions between the two in regard to the investing
01:50themes?
01:51How does this reflect the worldviews of both the different parties?
01:54Yeah, it's strange because the worldviews and political statements don't necessarily
02:00match up 100% with their investment goals, right?
02:05Their investment goals are to make money.
02:08So what you do see is the leadership roles that they tend to have on certain committees,
02:17is pushing them towards one side or the other.
02:20There's without a doubt a higher, call it tech approach in the Democratic trades, and
02:27there's a higher energy and financial services in the Republican trades, even though tech
02:33is still the largest portion of the portfolio.
02:37Now you alluded to this, why is this legal and do you think there is a chance that could
02:42change?
02:43I don't think there's a chance that they will stop this.
02:47It's rare that Congress will do something to hurt themselves.
02:51However, I do think that it's likely that there'll be eventually some bipartisanship
02:57support for maybe making the rules a little bit stronger, right?
03:02There's not a lot of fines or real action that makes it so they have to disclose on
03:08a timely basis and things like that.
03:11The fine is like a thousand dollars, right?
03:14It's more getting shamed by our partners at Unusual Whales is more damaging than the thousand
03:20dollar fine.
03:21So I could see them increasing the fine or decreasing the amount of time they have to
03:27report it.
03:28The beautiful thing is all of those things would make our data better and our ability
03:33for Dan Weisskopf and I to manage this fund better because the information will come to
03:37us quicker.
03:38I love it.
03:39And speaking of that, how do you receive this data and how does it manifest in those portfolio
03:43decisions?
03:44Yeah.
03:45So this is public data.
03:47Now it's also gobbledygook when you go to the public websites and try and get it.
03:51So our partners at Unusual Whales, they're the ones that really partial through the data,
03:57put it into things where we can slice and dice, see patterns, see groups of specific
04:04people doing things, really get rid of the noise, right?
04:08Some of these Congress members, they just go hire a broker to do some direct indexing
04:12for them or buy everything.
04:14We don't want to buy everything.
04:15We want to buy the things that it looks like they either came out of a committee meeting
04:20or three of them bought similar things on the same day or across the board, they're
04:26all seem to be selling the same thing.
04:28So that data, taking it from the gobbledygook that's on the public websites, filtering it
04:35through the Unusual Whales, basically software and data collection.
04:40And then Dan Weiskoff and I taking the time to interpret it and understand it and build
04:45a portfolio that hopefully allows investors to profit the same way Nancy Pelosi does or
04:53Ted Cruz does.
04:54Yeah, who doesn't want to be on equal footing as the people like them that are profiting?
04:57And Mike, it's no secret crypto has become a political issue.
05:01Does it have an impact on either of these portfolios?
05:04So they're required to disclose their crypto holdings.
05:09A lot of them, you'd be surprised, do have them.
05:11And it's also probably not a surprise that it seems to be more on the Republican side.
05:16I know there was a lot of stories when JD Vance was picked as Trump's running mate that
05:20he owned it.
05:22As of right now, we do not have crypto in there, but we are working on some ways because
05:27none of them own the crypto stocks.
05:30And right now, we don't own any ETFs in the portfolio either, but we are looking at it
05:35and trying to find ways to get that exposure if it does become a meaningful portion of
05:41what congressional members are investing in.
05:44Mike Venuto, the co-founder and CIO of Tidal Financial Group.
05:48Absolutely fascinating conversation.
05:50Thank you so much for joining me today.
05:52Thank you, Dan.
05:53Thank you, Benzinga listeners.
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