https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/nsvma5/i_analyzed_all_the_controversial_trades_made_by/ Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts [ ] Log InSign Up User account menu 16.1k I analyzed all the controversial trades made by Senators in the 2020 Congressional insider trading scandal. Here are the results! [renderTimi] OC DD Close 16.1k Posted by9 hours ago Cash MoneyPlatinumGold2Bravo!Rocket LikeVibingHelpful33Wholesome26 Silver40Hugz31Bravo Grande!Take My Energy2Wholesome Seal of Approval Narwhal SaluteAll-Seeing Upvote3 I analyzed all the controversial trades made by Senators in the 2020 Congressional insider trading scandal. Here are the results! [renderTimi] OC DD Preamble: The ability of Congress Members to trade stocks has been controversial from the start. There have been multiple stories covering the 2020 congressional insider trading scandal where Congress Members allegedly used insider knowledge to trade large positions in stocks just before the coronavirus pandemic crash. But none of the articles talked about the financial implications of those trades and whether the retail investors could have front-run the market using the disclosed data. Basically, what I wanted to know was How much did the Senators save by offloading their positions before the crash and could I have done the same? Where is the data from: efdsearch.senate.gov For my previous analysis into congressional trading, I used data from senatestockwatcher.com. But not all the transactions are captured on the website and I wanted to match exactly with the trades reported by famous journals. efdsearch.senate.gov is the United States official website where Senator, former Senator, and candidate financial disclosure reports are available. Some of the data is available as a scanned file and some in normal HTML format. I had to manually transcribe most of the data used in this analysis. In case you are wondering about the time delay between the actual transaction and reporting, Congress Members are expected to report the transaction within 30 days. The median delay in reporting that I observed for all the trades was 28 days. All the trades and my analysis are shared as a google sheet at the end. Analysis: There are multiple factors at play here. Timeline: On January 24, 2020, the Senate Committees on Health and Foreign Relations held a closed meeting with only Senators present to brief them about the COVID-19 outbreak and how it would affect the United States. I am considering this as the start time for my analysis. Any sale made by the senators after this point up to Feb 26 is considered. (I did not consider sales beyond that point as SPY dropped 8% during that week. My assumption here is it's realistic for any person be it a normal investor or a Senator to panic sell after seeing that drop). For reference, SPY dropped an additional 25% over the next 3 weeks! Senators under consideration: I have considered trades done by 4 senators in my analysis. I have focused on these 4 as all of them were investigated by Justice Department and the FBI following the trading scandal. 1. Richard Burr 2. Kelly Loeffler 3. James M Inhofe 4. David A Perdue r/wallstreetbets - I analyzed all the controversial trades made by Senators in the 2020 Congressional insider trading scandal. Here are the results! David Perdue sold 44 times ($3.49 MM) in the 33 days following the closed senate meeting. Interestingly James Inhofe only transacted 8 times but the combined value of shares he sold was a whopping $4.12MM. The most ironic part is that Richard Burr who was under investigation the longest and had to step down from the intelligence committee due to the scandal had the least dollar volume in the transaction ($1.1MM). Results: Before we dive into the overall amount saved by the Senators and the retail investor side of the analysis, let's see what were the best trades made by the Senators during that time period. r/wallstreetbets - I analyzed all the controversial trades made by Senators in the 2020 Congressional insider trading scandal. Here are the results! David Perdue absolutely killed it with his stock plays. He is present 7 times in the top 10 list and his best play, Caesars Entertainment reduced 83% after he sold his position. Fun Fact: if a stock reduces 83%, it has to go up 488% just to reach back to its initial price. Another interesting observation from the chart is that senators mainly sold stocks related to the entertainment and hospitality industries which were the most severely affected industries due to the pandemic. r/wallstreetbets - I analyzed all the controversial trades made by Senators in the 2020 Congressional insider trading scandal. Here are the results! The above chart showcases the amount of money saved by the Senators due to front running the market crash. David Perdue saved an insane $2.2MM with his stock sales. I also kept a multiple of annual Senate salary to showcase the scale of impact they made to their portfolio because of the trades. Finally, we come to the million-dollar question. Was it possible for the retail investors to follow these trades and front-run the crash? This is where the analysis gets a bit tricky. 88% of the transactions were reported by March 3rd but if you consider it in dollar values, only 52% of the transactions were reported (some of the high-value transactions were reported only after the crash). But if you were an astute investor, you could have observed a stark difference in what the Senators were saying and how they were trading. For Eg. Richard Burr reassured the public that the US was well prepared for the pandemic but then sold $1MM worth of stocks in the next two weeks. I know that hindsight is 20/20 but if you could have connected these two dots, then you could have saved up to 25% of your portfolio before the crash. Limitations of analysis: There are some limitations to the analysis. a. I have only used one black swan event for the analysis. A better method would be to analyze the stock trading pattern over 3-4 major crashes and see if any pattern emerges. But the current limitation is that efdsearch.senate.gov has only data since 2012. b. There is no disclosure for the exact amount of money invested by Congress Members. The disclosure is always in ranges (e.g., $100k - $200k). So, for calculating the transaction amount, I have taken the average of the given range. Conclusion I intentionally left out the party affiliation of the Senators as I did not want our political views clouding our financial judgment. I could not find a single example where a retail investor or an institutional investor or even a hedge fund leveraging this information to make their trades (it might just not be public!). Another possible explanation here is that Senators might just have superior stock trading capability as none of them were indicted for this and all investigations are closed now. However you view it, this analysis in addition to my last analysis (which proves that Congress Members have better returns than SP500) showcases that there is significant money to be made by following their trades closely! Google Sheet containing all the data: here Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. 883 comments share save hide report 95% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a commentLog InSign Up Sort by best View discussions in 13 other communities [renderTimi] level 1 Original Poster8 hours ago Take My Energy My next analayis is on IPOs. I got the data for all the IPOs done in past 2 decades. Any predictions on whether on average one can make money of an IPO? 2.2k Reply Share ReportSave level 2 8 hours ago Can you focus on the 1 week, 1 month, and 1 year after open too? The news is usually the outliers, so really curious if there are any trends shortly after open. 522 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 8 hours ago I'm really interested in that one. Especially if you compare pre-IPO vs. buying on IPO day in the open market Basically asking how much money do small dollar retail investors lose out on by not being allowed to buy until the market opens 173 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 7 hours ago The best one to look at is Nancy Pelosi. She and her husband participated in the Visa IPO, where credit card legislation that would protect consumers was killed in the house, which she was in charge of. 249 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 7 hours ago r/dataisbeautiful Well done OP! 21 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 that's slang for.. y'know 7 hours ago If you get shares allocated you can definitely make money. If you're buying in the secondary market the day of the IPO you will probably be under water on those shares for 6-12 months. 17 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 6 hours ago This is a great read. Thanks! 2 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 7 hours ago I have no doubt one can make money of an IPO, are you doing this from the perspective of a senator investing in an IPO or anybody? If senator I'd imagine it would have to be a very lucky event where a company was entering the market just as laws were being discussed that would cripple them in the senate. Like if Facebook IPOd when the US was about to launch a GDPR clone. 2 Reply Share ReportSave 31 more replies level 1 7 hours ago Someone should go to jail over this 116 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 6 hours ago * edited 16 minutes ago You and I would go to jail. These clowns get a "get out of SEC jail free" card. The system is F*cked. 120 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread 3 more replies level 1 7 hours ago Would there be a way to create an ETF that simply mirrors the stock picks of congress as a whole? 415 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 3 hours ago SwampETF ticker $SWMP 43 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 6 hours ago Brilliant 124 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 3 hours ago Yes, but unfortunately the data is not live and using it would probably not return any big gains unless everyone in Congress does long term trading: The STOCK Act requires a one-year study of the growing political intelligence industry, and requires every Member of Congress to publicly file and disclose any financial transaction of stocks, bond, commodities futures, and other securities within 45 days on their websites, rather than once a year as they do now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act The ETF could theoretically update its portfolio every 45 days. I bet you could paper trade this too to see if it would be worth doing or not. 69 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 4 hours ago I was told that there's a way to see exactly what Nancy Pelosi does trading wise and that it's generally guaranteed gains with some losses thrown in so it doesn't look obvious 36 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 3 hours ago Perhaps. But they are only required to report trades within 30 days and OP said the median he is seeing is 28 days. So your ETF would lag by a month and miss the volatile spikes that they are (allegedly) using insider information to beat. 3 Reply Share ReportSave View Entire Discussion (883 Comments) More posts from the wallstreetbets community Continue browsing in r/wallstreetbets Subreddit Icon r/wallstreetbets Like 4chan found a Bloomberg Terminal 10.4m Degenerates 90.8k Buying FDs --------------------------------------------------------------------- Created Jan 31, 2012 Join Powerups [powerup] Powerups are unlocked in r/wallstreetbets Become a Hero Community heroes Powerups5381 User avatar Johnnyboy1423 91 User avatar amitkanabar 90 User avatar west_stringfellow 85 User avatar religionresearcher 13 User avatar madtendie 12 User avatar androidbuilt7 11 User avatar callme_sweetdick 10 User avatar fealoga 10 See All Heroes helpReddit AppReddit coinsReddit premiumReddit gifts aboutcareerspressadvertiseblogTermsContent policyPrivacy policyMod policy Reddit Inc (c) 2021. 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