For some reason, members of the U.S. Congress can buy and hold stocks. While they may insist there’s no foul play involved, and that they’re simply participating in the same markets as everybody else, new research shows that, somehow, they’re actually *better* at picking stocks than the average investor. I know, who woulda thunk it?

According to Project Syndicate, the average member of Congress who isn’t in a leadership position rarely “beats the market.” However, once a member of Congress gets elevated to a leadership role, they suddenly become an expert stock trader. In fact, Congressional leaders outperform their non-leader counterparts by an average of 47 percentage points per year.

What explains this? I mean, c’mon — you know what explains it. But until we have the guts to just call it legalized insider trading, we’ll just have to stick with the explanation of “I guess they just got smarter.”