Monrovia's Congresswoman Judy Chu - An Amazing Stock Picker

The economics blog, ZeroHedge.com, notes ( http://goo.gl/JeJKlP ) that Judy Chu, one of the two congresswomen who represent Monrovia, is a prolific and amazingly successful market trader, buying numerous "calls" and "puts" in amounts in the range of $1,000-$15,000 per trade and growing her net worth (apparently by the trades, the article speculates) from less than $100,000 in 2008 to more than $3 million by 2014.

Comment: Calls and puts, if I understand correctly, are not stock or bond ownership, but essentially bets that the value of an investment will either go up (calls) or down (puts). Investing books I've read say such financial mechanisms are extremely risky, so I wouldn't try to emulate the congresswoman's success.

- Brad Haugaard