Starting Autopilot
Autopilot has around 40% to 45% of customer assets in funds that track politicians, but that wasn’t always the case. The company started as an investing app called Iris that let you follow the stock trading activity of your friends.
Josephs told Benzinga this came at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic when people were putting their stimulus checks into the stock market.
“We quickly realized though that the majority of people didn’t want to follow their friends, they just wanted to follow the best people,” Josephs told Benzinga.
In charge of marketing at the time for Iris, Josephs said he quickly saw that social media was abuzz with viral posts about oddly timed stock trades made by politicians.
“From there in 2023 we pivoted and we built the first way to trade alongside Nancy Pelosi via the Autopilot technology.”
Why Congress Trading is Popular
Josephs says the public enjoys watching the trading activity of members of Congress for several reasons, including the initial shock of learning that they are allowed to buy and sell stocks.
“The second stage was kind of a little bit like frustration, where it’s like, wait a second, not only are they doing this right in front of us, which I didn’t know they were allowed to do, they also are doing a lot of it with conflicts of interest,” Josephs told Benzinga.
Alongside the example of Pelosi’s questionable purchases, Josephs says other conflicts of interest include buying war stocks while sitting on armed services committees.
“The third stage, I think, which we’re in now, is essentially just kind of like throwing your hands up, being like, screw it, you know, if they’re going to keep trading in front of us, we’re going to join them.”
While Autopilot is benefiting from interest in Congress trading, Josephs said the ultimate goal is to get politicians banned from trading.
Josephs said another frustrating part of monitoring congressional trading activity is seeing the violations of the STOCK Act, when trades are not reported within 45 days.
“It’s pretty reasonable and they should be the ones not breaking the law. Yet so many of them do it.”
Josephs said the $200 fine for violating the STOCK Act is also frustrating, as it is so minimal.
Autopilot Vs. ETFs
Josephs said Autopilot has options for customers to trade based on one politician, while these ETFs offer broad exposure to multiple members.
Autopilot is also partnered with brokerages to allow customers to integrate directly into their brokerage portfolios.
Other Autopilot Investment Portfolios
Josephs tells Benzinga that political tracking portfolios make up around 40% to 45% of customer assets. The other assets are divided between meme portfolios (15%) and user-created portfolios (40%).
Meme portfolios include the Inverse Cramer ETF, which is also incredibly popular with Autopilot users.
Josephs said that among the user-created portfolios are a World War III portfolio and a Grok portfolio, which were both developed by a Wharton professor using AI.
“He created prompts to essentially have AI pick stocks for him,” Josephs said.
This includes the newer Grok portfolio and also portfolios that use Claude and ChatGPT to pick stocks.
“We’ll see which AI language learning model does the best at picking stocks.”
Josephs said he’s also excited to see more portfolios created on Autopilot from Twitter personalities, YouTubers and aspiring fund managers.
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