Unusual Whales

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Unusual Whales
Image: X profile avatar of @unusual_whales
handle	@unusual_whales
role	data platform, news institution
known for	options flow tools, congressional trading trackers, the NANC and KRUZ ETFs

Unusual Whales is an anonymous data institution that made options flow and congressional stock trades legible to retail, whose breaking posts and SBF interview made it a fixture of crypto Twitter as well as fintwit.

Contents

1 Congressional trading
2 Crypto relevance
3 Assessment
4 References

Unusual Whales is a market data platform and social media institution founded in 2020 by an anonymous developer who posts under the same name. It began by surfacing unusual options activity for retail traders and grew into a general market intelligence brand whose terse breaking posts are quoted across both financial and Crypto Twitter. The founder has given interviews, including to NPR, while remaining pseudonymous, and the company describes a small team known to the public mostly by handles.

Congressional trading

The account's signature crusade is tracking stock trades disclosed by members of the United States Congress, publishing viral reports on lawmakers whose portfolios beat the market. That work fed directly into two exchange traded funds launched in February 2023 with Subversive Capital: NANC, which copies trades disclosed by Democratic lawmakers and their families, and KRUZ, which copies Republicans, named in reference to Nancy Pelosi and Ted Cruz respectively, per Bloomberg and Morningstar coverage. The funds turned a meme about political insider advantage into an investable product and made Unusual Whales a reference point in policy debates over congressional stock trading bans.

Crypto relevance

Though rooted in equities and options, Unusual Whales runs crypto trackers on its platform and its posts are a standing input for crypto traders, who treat congressional and institutional flow as the tradfi mirror of on chain insider hunting by accounts like Lookonchain. In December 2022 the account conducted one of the last long form interviews with FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried before his arrest, grilling him about Alameda and the exchange's collapse. Its deadpan reposting of absurd market news also made it a meme institution; in the trenches its screenshots circulate the way Watcher Guru posts do, as raw material for trades and jokes alike.

Assessment

Unusual Whales occupies an unusual position: an anonymous account that regulators, journalists, and politicians all cite, and whose data products are marketed on the premise that markets are tilted toward insiders. Critics have periodically disputed the precision of third party options flow data generally, but the account's congressional reporting has proven durable and widely replicated.

References

Category: People