A retail investor who used 'copy trading' to help grow his portfolio to 7 figures explains his strategy

• "Copy trading" has become a popular trading strategy in recent years.
• A day trader says he boosted his portfolio to seven figures using the strategy.
• He mirrored bets on stocks disclosed in filings from US politicians.

If you asked Ariel Itzhak what the best decision he has ever made is, he would say copying Nancy Pelosi's stock trades.

The former Speaker of the House has garnered a meme-like reputation among retail investors over the years as the most successful stock trader on Capitol Hill. The success of her trades, which aren't placed directly by Pelosi but by her husband, Paul Pelosi, inspired Itzhak to start copying the options bets.

Originally a crypto trader, Itzhak found himself drawn to copy Pelosi after she disclosed an Nvidia options play a few years ago. Over a two-year period, copying Pelosi and members of the Trump administration helped boost his portfolio by nearly 150% to over $1.1 million, a figure Business Insider verified by reviewing screenshots of his brokerage account.

"She never misses," he told Business Insider. "She always does really well on her trades. I thought, 'it's gonna be an interesting experiment to copy her.' I figured, worst case, I'll lose a few $1,000s."

His initial investment that mirrored Pelosi's trades was $38,000, which Itzhak admits seemed like a lot at the time, but three months later, he said it had tripled in value.

In a detailed post in the Reddit forum r/Daytrading, Itzhak provided more insight into what he learned about Pelosi's strategy in the months after his first copy trade paid off.

"I later learned that the reason she uses options is to leverage her picks (she chooses deep in the money which is not insane risk but also not insane reward)," he said. "She then bought more stocks and I copied every single one of her trades and added more cash (around $400k total).

Itzhak didn't strictly copy Pelosi's trades, though. More recently, he started monitoring another trend at the intersections of Wall Street and Capitol Hill, one that gave rise to one of the hottest trades of 2025.

President Donald Trump's focus on strengthening the US domestic supply chains sent several little-known mining and metals stocks soaring last year, as the White House purchased large stakes in publicly traded firms, including MP Materials, Lithium Americas, and Critical Metals.

For Itzhak, monitoring the Trump administration's investments has also been a winning strategy, and he said his White House portfolio is currently outperforming the portfolio based on Pelosi's picks.

Itzhak said that his success with copying White House trades has prompted him to shift some funds out of the Pelosi portfolio. However, he remains focused on her trading activity and continues to let it inform his own.

"She disclosed new trades last month. Most of them are trimming her positions in tech, but one trade that really stood out in my opinion is $1mil purchase in $AB," he wrote on Reddit, referring to the ticker for AllianceBernstein. "It was the only position she added more money to."

The experience has inspired Itzhak to create his own app, Insiderwave, that allows users to track and copy trades from prominent investors.

Other platforms to help traders follow public investors have sprung up, too, and d Itzhak isn't the only one who thinks that copytrading can be useful for retail investors.

"Long term, we really believe that 'picking smart investors' to invest for you should be the way everyone invests," Steven Wang, founder and CEO of the copytrading platform dub, told Business Insider. "There's a reason 70%-90% of all retail investors lose money. Your chances of doing better, while enjoying the ride, are significantly higher when investing alongside someone with a real track record, experience, and an edge."