[HN Gopher] Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress
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Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress
Author : seriousquestion
Score : 754 points
Date : 2021-04-15 15:26 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (unusualwhales.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (unusualwhales.com)
| foolinaround wrote:
| Where there is a will, there is a way!
|
| As long as we have crooks as our representatives, they will find
| various loopholes to cheat.
|
| Caesar's Wife Must Be Above Suspicion.
|
| When we find such folks, since the media won't ask those
| questions, the constituents must call/write/email their offices
| and know that they are being watched.
| smooth_remmy wrote:
| Isn't there a delay in seeing these trades? They're reported 2
| months after they happen, right?
| hackeraccount wrote:
| why doesn't someone create an index fund that just track
| congressional trades?
| cwkoss wrote:
| there is reporting lag, so by the time you know about an
| opportunity it is usually gone
| macinjosh wrote:
| Only government bureaucracy could convert what is essentially
| class based market information access into something benign
| sounding as "reporting lag". Maybe "scraps" is a more apt
| term?
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| What the hell is with the interface on this site? I can't select
| text, everything is acting funny...
| AlexTWithBeard wrote:
| The very minimal thing each and every one of us can do is to
| write to their representative [1] and senator [2] expressing
| concern over the issue.
|
| [1] https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-
| representati...
|
| [2] https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
| adam12 wrote:
| Clear corruption.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNDHiiJaxes
| ffff0ffffff wrote:
| How about we just line up every politician fucking KILL THEM ALL!
| floatingatoll wrote:
| If the author of this site is reading this, you could add a
| redirect for this URL with either trailing comma or trailing
| comma-and-whitespace, to catch the cases where people copy a
| little bit too much to the clipboard:
|
| https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate,
| gnabgib wrote:
| The title is "On Life, Liberty, and Stock Markets" (h2.. most
| prominent on page), or "Unusual Whales" (html.head.title). While
| this title might be a synopsis, it doesn't exactly hit the
| guidelines[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html]
| macinjosh wrote:
| I am shocked, shocked to find there is gambling going on in here!
| /s
|
| In all seriousness, if we are talking about privilege this
| privilege the ruling elite has to participate freely in insider
| trading behavior is bonkers. It likely just isn't the politicians
| themselves. Their staffers, confidants, and so on could all be
| benefiting.
|
| If Presidents are goaded to put their assets in blind trusts when
| taking office why shouldn't principal members of the other two
| branches of governments be obliged to do the same?
| magwa101 wrote:
| This is brilliant. This should be illegal. CEOs and anyone with
| insider info have trade "windows", or are put onto "program"
| trading. This should absolutely be happening to these servants.
| voidfunc wrote:
| If you want to get rich go into politics.
| r00fus wrote:
| Fixed: if you want to get rich, already be rich. If you want to
| get into politics, it helps to be rich.
|
| Takeaway: just be rich, and you can do whatever you want.
| hartator wrote:
| It will be fun to have an index fund tracking this. Can't beat
| the corruption? Just buy their market!
| mabbo wrote:
| The very people whose job it should be to stop this sort of thing
| are the ones who are profiting from it. How do you change this?
|
| No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so that
| elected officials can't profit from inside information? Why would
| they ever vote for such a bill?
| aaomidi wrote:
| If this starts making a stink, they're going to create the
| ability to not report your stock purchases.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| I think opposite is more likely. After the GameStop fiasco
| there is a push for more transparency, not less.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's what's happening with flight tracking info.
|
| It got too easy to see who's flying their private jets and
| where.
|
| Meanwhile if you travel by car, get bent.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| It's impossible.
|
| Who watches the watchmen?
|
| And Democratic party believes that bigger gov't is the solution
| to many of our problems.
| dlp211 wrote:
| Show me a country with little government that is successful.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Comparatively speaking, most Western countries.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Start with the 3 best examples you can name and we can go
| over how regulated various industries are, what
| percentage of income is paid in taxes, and what
| percentage of their GPD is non military government
| spending.
| partiallypro wrote:
| There is a lot more to governance than expenditures and
| safety nets. I'm starting to think we've been in a free
| society in the west so long that people have simply
| overlooked the history of large governments stifling
| industry and life. Limited government is a very big thing
| in the West, even in countries with very generous social
| programs.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Could you at least pick one so we can talk specifics?
| dlp211 wrote:
| This is a joke right? Based on what measurement do most
| Western countries have little government?
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Many people constantly deride them for lack of regulation
| of X, where X is something the speaker believes has huge
| negative externalities.
|
| Also, I'd point to a place like India for "big"
| government: the government tries to run too many things
| and does a bad job on average.
| wpietri wrote:
| If it's impossible to have an effect, then every government
| would be equally bad at this. But that's not the case.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| In some states the people can literally make the law via public
| initiatives. If you don't have that process at home push for
| THAT. Looking at this map there are a lot of states that need
| to work on step 1.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Initiative_and_referendum
| aaomidi wrote:
| > No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so
| that elected officials can't profit from inside information?
| Why would they ever vote for such a bill?
|
| The recent Black Lives Matter protests have taken a far more
| aggressive turn against systemic issues. Systemic issues such
| as the economy, the stock market, policing as a whole, and
| capitalism in its essence. Donating to bail-out funds, joining
| the protests, increasing awareness in the problems our economic
| system has created for us without proper good-faith regulations
| is all helpful.
|
| You can't reform corruption to this level. You need to cut it
| out and start over.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The very people whose job it should be to stop this sort of
| thing are the ones who are profiting from it."
|
| Welcome to the system. This is pervasive in many other aspects
| as well (court, police, DA, etc).
| skohan wrote:
| Checks and balances are supposed to address this issue. I
| think the only one which really does the job here would be
| the right to initiative/referendum. That or an electoral
| solution, but that one's really hard since new legislators
| will be incentivized to maintain the status quo. You would
| almost need a new party defined around that one issue, which
| is hard to imagine in the US.
|
| _Maybe_ an executive order could also prohibit this? I 'm
| not sure.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Maybe an executive order could also prohibit this?"
|
| I don't think this will help. I feel that executive orders
| are misused and abused today. They are really only only
| supposed to be executive guidance on how to enforce or
| implement a law. Instead they are being used as redefining
| law or even ignoring them.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| We have to do the work. We have to educate ourselves on the
| issues which means reading bills as they are going through the
| process and being voted on, calling and writing our
| representatives to tell them how we want them to vote on those
| bills.
|
| I have family who just love to complain about what legislators
| are doing and how they're voting but have not once, ever,
| actually contacted their representative about these issues. Not
| once have they actually read the bills and tried to understand
| them. It's all based purely on whatever news channel they're
| watching. Yet, they somehow think that through all that
| complaining they're actually accomplishing something.
|
| I know my family isn't unique in this. I was just talking to a
| contractor who is doing work on my house that started in on
| this nonsense.
| seph-reed wrote:
| The only reasonable way out is to create our own systems. You
| have to stop thinking top-down.
|
| Liquid democracy is something that can be built from the ground
| up, and has the potential to deprecate our modern system.
| ek750 wrote:
| I think I agree in theory, but I think we've seen in practice
| that people are easily controlled by mass media. Wouldn't we
| just be moving the locus of control?
| seph-reed wrote:
| Do you know what liquid democracy is?
|
| It's a form of representative democracy, so it should be
| able to avoid the issues of oligarchy (being centralized
| and easy to corrupt) as well as the issues of full
| democracy (where every idiot has a say worth any experts)
| cubano wrote:
| Why would you believe that both the individual voters and
| their delegates wouldn't be susceptible to almost all the
| same corrupting and manipulative factors that plague
| voting systems today?
|
| The OP is correct...spending in mass media on the various
| issues would almost surely allow the purchasing of voter
| mindshare just exactly as advertising today drives sales
| of almost identical branded products for inflated prices.
|
| Don't get me wrong...in general I like the idea of
| "liquid democracy" (I remember it being called
| "Superdemocracy" back in the 80's when MajorBBS creator
| Tim Striker very much lobbied for its creation)...but it
| would be foolish to believe that the same forces that
| corrupt modern politics wouldn't be able to corrupt it as
| well.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Corruption is still possible, but the real trick to
| liquid democracy is that every stage is a form of
| escalation with the potential for correction.
|
| Let's take two scenarios:
|
| 1. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an extremist
| channel, it'll likely get locked in and come out even
| more extreme than it started. extremists tend to look up
| to people who are even more extreme. when this happens,
| there's a good chance the person who's vote it originally
| was will be upset with where it ends up
|
| 2. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an
| intellectual/thoughtful person, it'll likely get locked
| into the academic/altruist channel and come out with an
| extreme subject expert. this is the ideal outcome.
|
| Basically, at any point where the vote is being passed up
| it can hit one of these channels and get locked in.
| There's massive (and immediate) drawbacks to letting your
| vote hit an extremist, and massive gains to passing to
| someone who's more intelligent and thoughtful.
|
| While you're totally right about peoples first vote being
| super manipulable, each successive pass off has an
| opportunity for escaping that mind control. And once it
| does, it'll stay out.
| sethammons wrote:
| my naive solution: politicians become monks. They go without.
| They are provided modest housing and budgets. I'm sure there
| are zounds of issues with it, but I like to imagine servant
| leaders who go without to do more for the communities they
| serve.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| The Catholic Church tried this and it did not work. Monks and
| nuns still become greedy, still compete for positions of
| power and still abuse their power when they get it.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Maybe it helped for a while?
| wpietri wrote:
| I'd be happy with that, but perhaps an easier solution is to
| make them moderately wealthy. Pay them a top 5% salary with a
| guaranteed pension for life, plus mandatory open finances for
| life. Then there's much less incentive to resort to graft.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| 100% Agree. Salaries for elected officials should be far
| higher and then make punishments for this very very strict
| so there's zero incentive to graft.
|
| The people running our country should not be making less
| than any typical c-staff or high level executive. They
| should be making lawyer/doctor/c-staff level money.
| souprock wrote:
| Make that a "top 5% salary" from the pool of Fortune 500
| CEOs, and it might do the job.
| sethammons wrote:
| Love it, that's the other side of the coin I like
| michaelmrose wrote:
| The income for a US senator or congressman is already
| literally exactly at the 95th percentile at 174,000. Making
| someone wealthy doesn't remove their incentive to gather
| more wealth it gives them a stake and incentive to be more
| effectively corrupt.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| 175k is not enough... it needs to be 300k at least. maybe
| 500k. Something high enough that the risk-reward for
| corruption is less attractive. 175k is a nice life but
| not even remotely enough to have the lifestyle you'd
| expect for someone running our country.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| It is the nature of ambition not to be satiated. people
| making millions of dollars per year want to make
| billions. Billionaires strive to exceed their peers. Our
| leaders already have a lot to lose. Predictably most of
| our corruption isn't high risk blatant illegality its the
| boringly legal influence peddling where regular donations
| buy your "totally legitimate" interests and concerns
| additional consideration by decision makers instead of
| paying n dollars for a particular law.
|
| There is no reason to believe paying them 2-3x as much so
| they can be really wealthy would lead to electing better
| leaders.
|
| Our lawmakers make 175k directly in salary and aprox 1
| million dollars for staff and 143k for office expenses.
| This is not including the cost of the lifetime pension
| they will qualify after only 5 years and lifetime health
| plan for themselves and spouse after 10 years in the
| house or 8 in the senate. Hint I know they pay I think
| 28% of the cost of their gold plan.
|
| Lifetime a 2 term senator will cost the tax payers near
| 18 million dollars in total.
| zucked wrote:
| I've always wondered about this. These are people who we
| elect to do a job - one that we expect and need them to do
| well. I wonder what would happen if their base salary was
| something higher than current - perhaps $300k. They receive
| the maximum healthcare coverages available to the majority
| of Americans. Pension is set at $100k/year at retirement,
| no strings attached.
|
| BUT - In exchange, you'd have to agree to some very
| restrictive governance while in office. Example:
|
| - No trading of specific investment vehicles, you may
| invest a maximum of ($x) per year in the following options
| (ETF, Treasuries, etc.). This goes for any immediate family
| members.
|
| - Congressperson's income can only consist of the US
| Government salaries. Any income from previous book deals,
| consulting, etc, must go into a blind trust that can only
| invest in the aforementioned investment options.
|
| I wonder if that is enough of an incentive to still attract
| sharp minds while perhaps incentivizing them to work more
| for the people and less for themselves.
| bosie wrote:
| you sure you meant top 5%? US congress is already easily in
| the top 5% of salaries
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| That doesn't really solve the problem because how do we make
| them become monks? We already have a blueprint on how to hold
| them accountable: hold them to the same standard as those
| working in financial services with access to PII. Essentially
| make it impossible for them to be active traders; they can
| even still invest in ETFs and hands off advisors/roboadvisors
| like Betterment.
| pishpash wrote:
| Even then, do you want people who are incentivized to pump-
| and-dump the macro market during their term? You'd almost
| need to enforce this for 10 years or more, even if it goes
| beyond their term.
| skapadia wrote:
| I've had a similar thought on many occasions, but even then,
| they will find alternative ways to acquire wealth and power.
| The clergy of many religions, in aggregate, have a lot of
| wealth and power, even if the wealth is not directly in their
| name.
|
| No system can prevent humans from exercising their basic
| instincts, emotions, urges, needs, and wants.
| passerby1 wrote:
| In my opinion the only thing stops that is the fear of
| punishment.
|
| But then the initial question arises: how to prove that
| there was a broken law in gaining more wealth/power (by
| chance vs intentionally).
|
| It feels like this question was asked for thousands of
| years.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Pragmatically? Make such a proposal go viral and delay its
| enforcement for 6 years so that current senators don't feel the
| heat until it's too late.
| anonymouswacker wrote:
| Since the media and intelligence agencies are great at
| vilifying any dissent (see "Capitol Riot" and how difficult it
| is for them to even get representation), there is no hope. The
| US is not going to get better as corruption is rampant and most
| are in the dark or powerless. Politicians like Bernie Sanders
| give hope, but they are few and far between, and muzzled.
| Perhaps the migration away from centralized news sources that
| are filtered by advertisers & intelligence agencies (see
| Manufacture of Consent) could help move us towards actually
| having information in the mainstream so that we can have a say,
| since our election system is rigged by the two right-wing
| parties, but there are too many decision makers still reading
| NYT and WSJ. Social media is clamping down on "fake news". The
| majority in the House/Senate are trying to push censorship for
| this reason, and now they are even trying to change the
| judicial branch to suit their whims.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Well the Capitol riots were not just any dissent. They were
| the gathering of a mob of people with crazy conspiracy
| theories (that very probably would not even agree with each
| other) as part of mediatic stunt (just not "the media") to
| give legitimacy to the claim the election had been stolen so
| the Republican party could suck up more money from its base
| for "the cause". I have myself much respect for Bernie
| Sanders and people fighting for more democracy and more
| equality please, please don't put them in the same bag than
| people being manipulated into giving time and money for
| imaginary causes.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > the two right-wing parties
|
| They are neither left nor right. There is a middle elite
| group that exploits politics on either side of the aisle to
| maintain power. And that's all it is. And they get filthy
| rich, but so too does the CCP which is left-wing. Taking
| advantage of power for personal gain is not an exclusive
| domain of one wing or the other. At any rate these
| oversimplified analogies break down among many lines upon
| closer inspection. There are elite insiders and then there's
| the rest of us.
| maxwell wrote:
| Constitutional amendment?
| gumby wrote:
| That's a very blunt instrument and difficult to get the
| wording correct.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| See also:
|
| "Infringed"
|
| "Papers and effects"
|
| "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution"
|
| And many others....
|
| No matter how clear you are they just ignore it like it's
| not there.
| mabbo wrote:
| And who would be voting on those?
|
| > An amendment may be proposed and sent to the states for
| ratification by either:
|
| > The U.S. Congress, whenever a two-thirds majority in both
| the Senate and the House of Representatives deem it
| necessary; or
|
| > A national convention, called by Congress for this purpose,
| on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the
| states (34 since 1959). The convention option has never been
| used.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amendments_to_the_Un.
| ..
| [deleted]
| meepmorp wrote:
| Participants in a constitutional convention?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The state national convention route is the most likely
| route to work if you really want to reign in Congress.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| How about initiative and referendum in the 26 states that
| have such processes and agitating for such processes in the
| states that don't.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| We have to educate the broader populace about the issue, then
| politicians will use the issue to gain political capital, win
| elections, and maybe change legislation and practices.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| "No really, how can we force congress to change the rules so
| that elected officials can't profit from inside information?
| Why would they ever vote for such a bill?"
|
| Well, those people profiting off of it would have to vote
| against each other's interests.
|
| Money wins elections. Not issues, which are just window
| dressing. The media cartels own your attention for all your
| waking ours and, as MiB said, while individuals are rational
| and sensible, people (that is, the voting electorate) are
| easily scared, easily duped, and increasingly easily
| controlled.
|
| So it's not just "vote against being rich", it's also "vote to
| lose the next election".
| intrepidhero wrote:
| If you think insider trading occurred, its already illegal and
| should be reported to the Office of Congressional Ethics.
| (https://oce.house.gov/learn/citizen-s-guide)
|
| I'm frankly disturbed that this kind of specific trading by
| people in power is going on at all. Salaried federal employees
| above a certain level are strongly encouraged to invest only in
| generic mutual funds to avoid even the appearance of conflict
| of interest. When I look at the above trades I'm not sure
| whether anything _technically_ illegal occurred but I 'd
| support making _all_ specific trading illegal to avoid even the
| appearance of unethical behavior. Higher powers deserve to be
| held higher standards.
| dmoy wrote:
| > When I look at the above trades I'm not sure whether
| anything technically illegal occurred but I'd support making
| all specific trading illegal to avoid even the appearance of
| unethical behavior.
|
| That sounds like an excellent idea to me. While in office,
| can only trade TSP funds, or their rough equivalents outside
| of TSP. If you wanna sell something that isn't a giant index
| fund? Do it before you take office.
|
| Then I'd further support that all trading would have to be
| done via a 10b5-1 plan, with a blackout window of at least 6
| months.
| munk-a wrote:
| We elect people who actually believe in governance instead of
| people out to make a buck. I know that everyone's going to act
| in their own interest (that's sorta how interests are defined)
| but some people feel a legitimate duty and loyalty to country
| and welfare above their own personal comfort - these people
| tend to be torpedoed very early on in US politics because they
| refuse to cozy up to special interests to play the campaign
| finance game but they do exist.
|
| It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world, but most
| people aren't out to con everyone else when they get the chance
| and, if a spotlight is shone on the problem, will respond that
| actions should be taken to make things more just.
|
| Here's an article calling out the stock trading specifically
| around Covid treatment drugs with some congressmen and
| politicians calling out the behavior:
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/aoc-calls-senate-i...
| Kranar wrote:
| Meh, a lot of the people you're describing are incredibly
| incompetent and succumb to simplistic ideologies. Over the
| long run they end up in the same position that everyone we're
| complaining about ends up in.
|
| While not entirely related, I remember a study by the U.S.
| military during the Vietnam war that said the worst
| performing soldiers were the ones who were patriotic and
| served due to a sense of duty. I'm simplifying here but the
| idea was that those were often the first people to feel a
| sense of entitlement and feel as if because they had good
| intentions that they were "owed" something.
|
| Belief in governance is cheap and doesn't do much to solve
| anything. Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities
| that result in change... having a good heart and believing in
| or trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is
| basically a loser's game.
| danans wrote:
| > Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that
| result in change... having a good heart and believing in or
| trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is
| basically a loser's game.
|
| We should expect elected officials to have both. It's not
| like it's impossible.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Can you dig up that study please?
| munk-a wrote:
| I strongly agree it's a loser's game - given our current
| political system. People who aren't willing to fight dirty
| and compromise their morals will fail since that's where
| the money is - and that's sort of my point. We need to
| change the system to make it so that these people can
| fairly compete by pulling money out of the political system
| and evening the playing field.
|
| I'm also not advocating that blindly loyal idiots should be
| in charge - a good comparison to make is to look at more
| local governance. On a local level the stakes are much
| lower so the money being thrown around is far less - this
| lets people get into politics because they want to make
| change which is an anomaly at the national level - most of
| those politicians are there because it's a career and they
| value preserving that over everything else.
|
| Another decent idea in this direction is term limits but
| I'm a bit concerned that that might deprive us of
| competency.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Competency, skills, leadership, those are qualities that
| result in change... having a good heart and believing in or
| trying to execute various altruistic ideologies is
| basically a loser 's game._
|
| If you are competent, skilled, and a leader, but are not
| altruistic, you will end up being a very competent, very
| skilled leader of a burglary operation. ;)
| partiallypro wrote:
| AOC has been silent on Democrats doing similar, which make it
| seem like she doesn't really care.
| fakedang wrote:
| AOC was vociferously calling for the shutdown of Parler on
| Twitter, when the protest was coordinated over Facebook and
| Twitter too. Imo, she's just a classic Democrat politician
| with a louder mouth, enough to rival the Republican mouths.
| insert_coin wrote:
| We elect people who seek power for the sake of power, and
| sometimes pretending to care about others help them acquire
| it, and sometimes when the stars align, having to actually
| help others helps them keep it.
|
| > It's easy to be a thorough cynic in the modern world...
|
| Thanks to politicians it's never been easier!
| jackdeansmith wrote:
| I feel like a good first step would be requiring that any
| assets over some small cutoff be held in a blind trust. It
| wouldn't solve all problems, but it sure would solve a lot.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| You cannot. As long as there are rigged markets and cadres of
| elites, we can truly do nothing. Sad, really. Not helping the
| matter is half of the US is below average intelligence and will
| elect crooks because they say the right things.
|
| If only there were more Ron Wydens and AOCs. But you see red
| states electing nutjobs who barely have high school degrees
| (Boeber) because they shout the loudest.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Wyden and AOC enjoy the luxury of not having to worry about
| re-election due to residing on extremely blue states. They
| would not be so bold if they represented Texas or Florida,
| for example.
|
| The same goes for Republican representatives in highly red
| states.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Ah ah, but that is completely circular logic.
|
| AOC would not represent Texas or Florida because they are
| not progressive enough to support her in a landslide,
| twice, the way her district did.
|
| Manchin mealy-mouthed his way into a slight win and has to
| be a slimy politician with no backbone because he craves
| power.
|
| The funniest part of your post is that you claim AOC "would
| not be bold." Do you even know who she is? She's the
| definition of bold. She is doing what she said she would do
| and pissing off centrist dems all over the place every day.
|
| But call me when AOC & Wyden are involved in a scandal,
| which is what this entire thread is about. If so, I'll
| change my tune, but until then, my original point stands.
| mLuby wrote:
| > half of the US is below average intelligence
|
| That is what average means.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| /woosh/
| gnopgnip wrote:
| Congress already passed the STOCK act, that is why these
| disclosures are required, and partially why this kind of
| securities fraud is illegal. It is the job of the SEC, and the
| justice dept to enforce this
| abfan1127 wrote:
| trying to stop the trades is the wrong fix. The right fix is
| remove their ability to affect markets. Getting to choose
| winners and losers will always create opportunity to abuse this
| privilege.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Someone has to wield political power over companies right? I
| would rather senators who are restricted from trading than
| senators who are restricted from lawmaking that might move a
| stock price.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Or get a handle on the wealth inequality that makes the way
| we compensate our top elected officials seemingly
| insignificant.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Maybe we could stop making fun of (the very few) people
| using their stimulus checks to buy stocks.
|
| When I hear that, I'm like, great. Don't bail out
| corporations, give people money directly and let them
| decide if they want to acquire a stake or not.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| > Don't bail out corporations, give people money directly
| and let them decide if they want to acquire a stake or
| not.
|
| I haven't thought of it like that, but it makes a lot
| more sense than "trickle-down" economics. (Quotes because
| of the disgust it triggers)
| c22 wrote:
| I spent all of the stimulus money I received at local
| businesses which have been severely impacted by the
| pandemic. Unfortunately none of them offered stock I
| could purchase.
|
| My first instinct was to give it all to a large tech
| company in exchange for some marvelous electronic bauble
| from China, but that seemed counter-productive after some
| deep thought.
| gpm wrote:
| This is fantasy, the rules by which the country is run
| inevitably effects the markets. Raise import taxes, local
| manufacturers do better, importers worse. Lower import taxes,
| the opposite. Build roads, construction companies and their
| supply chains do better. Weaken environmental laws, oil
| companies do better. Make it easier to sue for health
| damages, personal injury lawyers do better. Fund the
| military, defense contractors do better. Etc, etc.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| look at the trades in the article and how it was impacted
| by government. Did they outlaw vaccines or did they
| specifically award money to specific companies?
|
| Further - it will not be reduced to zero. The goal is to
| move towards zero.
| jrockway wrote:
| I disagree with this. The people we elect to govern have to
| be able to govern. But, they maybe don't need to have any
| business holdings / stock while they're in office.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| again, the government's role _should_ be protection of
| protection of person and property. You 're conflating
| "govern" and "control". There are other means to control.
| In reality, your goal will never be met because no one is
| going to openly step into that scenario and be altruistic,
| certainly not all 536 people.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The protection of person and property oftentimes runs
| counter to the benefit of a subset of corporations. Given
| this, government has to do a balancing act. It's in that
| balancing act that lets them enrich themselves - either
| through happenstance or on purpose.
| c22 wrote:
| That's a pretty pessimistic view. Perhaps the individuals
| currently filling those roles wouldn't go for it, but it
| seems like we might be able to find 536 altruistic
| idealists somewhere in America.
| jrockway wrote:
| I didn't dive deeply into this data, but it doesn't sound
| like we even need to find 536 idealists. If you sort by
| number of trades descending, it becomes less than mine
| very quickly (I buy 4 mutual funds once a month,
| automatically). If you sort by value of trades
| descending, it looks like there are only a handful of
| officials with any meaningful amount of money in the
| stock market. (For some value of meaningful; there is an
| example in there about a $50,000 trade, and it just
| doesn't seem like very much money to me. 50 million
| dollars, get out that microscope. $50,000? Doesn't change
| anyone's life, so not really worth being corrupt for.)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/18/elizabeth-warren-st...
|
| https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Anti-Corruption%...
| mabbo wrote:
| Great. Now you just need the majority of elected officials to
| get behind the bill.
|
| Note that the house majority leader is also one of the
| biggest winner of these rules not existing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Politics/people is the top of the OSI stack, hence why the
| problem must be solved there.
|
| If you're more comfortable behind an IDE, gotta get
| comfortable calling representatives and pounding the
| pavement. That leads to where the decisions are made.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| To start with, there needs to be lots of advocacy for insider
| trading investigations
| kiliantics wrote:
| In the past, the things that ultimately worked were collective
| revolts, strikes, sabotage, assassinations.
|
| I think we need to acknowledge that, in the same way that the
| people with the power to stop this are profiting, they are also
| the people with the power to change who is in power or how they
| get in power. Elections are not effective ways of changing
| systemic power structures anymore. Society pretty much needs an
| overhaul, especially in the face of serious existential risks
| like climate change or looming military conflicts.
| slibhb wrote:
| Is this not already illegal?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| ihsw wrote:
| Is it worthwhile to call it illegal when it's not enforced?
| adolph wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/17749.
| ..
| slibhb wrote:
| > Still, two major elements of the law remain. Insider
| trading is illegal, even for members of Congress and the
| executive branch. And for those who are covered by the now-
| narrower law, disclosures of large stock trades are
| required within 45 days. It will just be harder to get to
| them.
| gowld wrote:
| Use the 4 boxes of Liberty
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
| thepete2 wrote:
| One thing I've always wondered: Does the stock market basically
| consist of insider traders making a profit off of people without
| that knowledge? I feel like even with immense restrictions on
| insiders in place, information is so easy to pass on to sb. else,
| that it should be impossible to prevent this.
|
| Heck, I could cough once for buy, twice for sell. Who's going to
| surveil me and notice that?
| op00to wrote:
| Yes, literally.
| Fat_Thor wrote:
| You legalize insider trading for everyone.
| RhodoGSA wrote:
| for that matter, day trading and technical analysis is
| literally just insider trading. This chart, based on some
| analysis of the way it's moved, with no interest in the metrics
| of the company itself, dictates buy or sell. Every 'Technical
| Trader' learns these 'indicators' and trades on them. It's just
| shadow insider trading under the guise of providing 'liquidity'
| but in reality just contributes to more volatility.
|
| Back when the stock market was founded, it was meant as a means
| of providing a signal of support for a company. It allowed the
| company to raise debt or financing based on it's stock price or
| signal of support. You bought company stock because you
| believed in the fundamentals of the business and you wanted to
| support it. Now it's just about how i can sell this stock to
| the bigger sucker, for more money than i bought it for.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| How else is Pelosi expected to afford her $20k sub z fridges
| filled with 13 dollar a pint ice cream?
| ModernMech wrote:
| I'm not saying Pelosi isn't fabulously wealthy, nor that she
| isn't engaged in activities which are unethical to enrich
| herself; but her fridge and ice cream are not evidence of this.
| The Speaker of the House makes a quarter million dollars per
| year. That's more than enough to afford such luxuries.
|
| https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/salaries
| thelean12 wrote:
| If she only made the 250k, she'd be spending like 12.5% of
| her yearly take home pay on a fridge. That seems like a
| little much.
|
| ($250k is like $160k take home with her home town taxes.
| 20/160 = 0.125)
| ModernMech wrote:
| For something designed to last multiple years, why not? I
| can look in my garage and kitchen at things I've spent
| 12.5% of my take home on that I expected to last a decade,
| including my refrigerator. I _do not_ like Nancy Pelosi,
| but this criticism always seemed like quite a stretch to
| me.
| hmsimha wrote:
| This conclusion in particular is probably something that I've
| assumed in the past:
|
| > On a whole, Democrats seem to love tech and Republicans seem to
| love oil and gas.
|
| But I hadn't really thought about the wide-reaching implications
| until now; perhaps its more than a coincidence that the current
| cryptocurrency bull run really took off shortly after Biden won
| the presidential election.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I have a better solution than all these "let's restrict", "let's
| demand pre-trade disclosure", etc.
|
| _Term limit them_.
|
| 12 years total Congress in lifetime. That is two full Senate or
| six House, or combination thereof.
|
| The longer a politician (or bureaucrat) is in a position, the
| more power they accumulate and the likelihood to forget the
| purpose of their role.
| ProjectBarks wrote:
| I am curious why unusual whales did not compare performance to
| market performance over set periods. I looked around for some
| papers and was unable to find anything recent. CATO published a
| report showing there is weak performance difference between
| senators and their stock portfolio [1].
|
| If they are outperforming this should 100% be remedied but I'd be
| open if anyone has comments that would contradict this report?
|
| [1] https://www.cato.org/research-briefs-economic-
| policy/relief-...
| paulpauper wrote:
| he is selling a subscription. if it actually worked as well as
| he purports he would do it himself. way easier to collect
| recurring subs from gullible ppl.
| genericone wrote:
| Where are they aggregating all this insider data from? Is there
| an index of stocks being traded by government insiders and
| officials that can be tracked in real-time?
| dvaun wrote:
| The Office of the Clerk of the House has a page for downloading
| Zip files of annual data[0].
|
| If you take the DocID from the XML or TXT files in those sets
| you can send a request to: https://disclosures-
| clerk.house.gov/public_disc/<doctype>-pdfs/<year>/<docid>.pdf
|
| - <doctype> works for the values "ptr" and "financial"
|
| - <year> self-explanatory
|
| - <docid> the DocID from the entries in the XML or TXT files
|
| Example: Nancy Pelosi disclosure/filing on 2021-04-09[1]
|
| [0]: https://disclosures-
| clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/Financi...
|
| [1]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-
| pdfs/202...
|
| This would be fun to play around with. I wonder if there's a
| better endpoint to source this from?
| adolph wrote:
| If you are using Python, this is an approach to get PDF
| tables into Pandas dataframes.
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-extract-tables-from-
| pd...
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Real time? No. The legislators have to report their trades a
| couple months after they make them, IIRC.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| That's unfortunate; If was real time a copycat investment
| strategy would work, right?
| delecti wrote:
| IIRC, the same law that requires them to report their
| trades makes it illegal to use that data to profit.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| There is no way it would be illegal to trade based on
| their disclosures
| greenshackle2 wrote:
| tl;dr yes but you would probably get beaten to the punch by
| high frequency traders, and risk being exploited by the
| discloser.
|
| If you had sneaky exclusive access to their trading flow in
| real time then yeah sure you could copy them and get the
| benefits of insider trading. (And you might be guilty of
| insider trading yourself? I'm not sure how the law works.)
|
| If _everyone_ knows Alice is doing insider trading and
| knows her trades, then when Alice buys X at $10.00, there
| will probably be other copycats piling into X and driving
| its price up, so you won 't be able to get the same price
| as Alice, unless you're faster than everyone else.
|
| Since you don't know what the actual inside information is,
| you don't know if it's still worth it to buy at $10.20,
| $10.30, etc. Maybe the inside info was only slightly better
| than expected earnings and the price end up being only
| $10.05.
|
| This is somewhat exploitable by Alice, she doesn't need
| insider information anymore, she just has to buy random
| stock Z and disclose it, watch copycats pile into Z and
| drive its price up, then sell it back at a higher price.
| alfl wrote:
| Scanning the data in the linked article [0], most trades are
| reported within a week, usually only a few days, some same
| day.
|
| [0]: https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| It talks about that pretty high up on the site that is linked.
| Just go read it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Like the US Senate, elected members in the US House of
| Representatives must disclose financial activity they or their
| spouse or their dependent children conduct while in office.
| These financial disclosures can be found here.
|
| https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data
|
| Looks like the report gets filed shortly after the trade.
| sakopov wrote:
| If I had to guess I'd say they're probably using EDGAR -
| https://www.sec.gov/edgar
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Take a trip to 1995 and check out what we use in Canada:
| SEDAR:
|
| https://www.sedar.com/
| LB232323 wrote:
| This is a really greasy website.
|
| It's not the cheesy logo or the fact that they are ripping off
| other fintech companies, it's that they are selling get rich
| quick dreams like a scam artist.
|
| This article is really an advertisement for their services and
| it's surprising that it went viral here. They are basically
| encouraging people to try and cash in on criminal financial
| activity in congress.
|
| I can't put my trust in this site.
| Thorentis wrote:
| Those evil republicans and their greedy capitalist agenda! Oh
| wait, both sides do this? Wait, the Democrats do it more?
| barbazoo wrote:
| Love that data this is making public but I wish it wasn't always
| so much blue vs red, Republicans vs Democrats, who is worse, my
| team or theirs. They're all corrupt to some degree, why make it
| even more partisan that it already is.
| nocommentguy wrote:
| Yeah but their side actually is much more corrupt. No
| whataboutism! /s
|
| (How does this comment contribute to the discussion? It
| preempts long partisan threads that derail the conversation
| which always get kicked off when someone points out it's all
| rotten).
| mattnewton wrote:
| I hope the intent was to show this is not necessarily a
| partisan issue, representatives on both sides of the aisle are
| clearly engaging in suspiciously successful trades.
| christiansakai wrote:
| Meanwhile ordinary people still believe that the war is against
| their fellow people, in identity politics, religion, sexual
| orientation etc. Devide et Impera.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's because it's the only war they even have a chance at
| winning because people in power will at least use them as pawns
| in their shared interests. They realize they lost the other war
| long ago and are subjects, not citizens in regards to holding
| the system itself accountable. Or are in blissful ignorance
| because it hasn't screwed them... yet.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > They realize they lost the other war long ago
|
| No, I vote ignorance. Most people don't even realize the
| current global political landscape is a battle of systems
| (E.g. Rules Based and China's Belt and Road Initiative).
|
| The idea that we're pawns doesn't cross most people's minds.
| Though I'd agree it may be willful ignorance as the truth not
| only hurts but is scary.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The idea that we're pawns doesn't cross most people's
| minds."
|
| Maybe. The fact that two of us here are even discussing it
| is something. I know quite a few people who feel this way.
| But it does usually take at least the witnessing of a
| blatant violation.
| reedjosh wrote:
| I think for me it was just the shear lack of change no
| matter which politician was in office. From there I
| started looking for why.
|
| At some point I also realized advertisements are purely
| bribes meant to shackle speech. Once I abandoned ad-
| funded media, my learning really took off.
| SMAAART wrote:
| Not bad! I wish we could have that info in real time!
| docflabby wrote:
| Only way to consistently outperform the market is lobbying,
| insider trading or fraud (see Madoff)
| vmception wrote:
| Don't forget about issuing your own stock and bonds.
|
| I personally consider that part of my own portfolio. No par
| value, sold at a higher price.
| kipchak wrote:
| Does anyone use this info for their own trading, particularly the
| $300 a year plan? You would figure if there's insider trading
| going on to be watched your performance copying their trades
| should be pretty good as well.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Conflicts of interest with politicians are unfortunately nothing
| new. Remember several years ago when Pelosi's husband owned Visa
| stock, while Pelosi was involved in legislation that - had it
| gone forward, which it did not - would adversely impact Visa?
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/stories/1111/67593_Page2.html
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Similar from yesterday:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807695
|
| HN can't see the forest for the trees.
|
| Trading isn't the issue.
|
| Why are our top elected officials not compensated enough? Income
| inequality. If it isn't trading, they'll chase Bezos until they
| "get what they deserve" one way or another.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Our top officials are compensated to the tune of 174,000 which
| is 95th percentile. Making people wealthier doesn't make them
| more honest.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Honestly some of these trades also seemed small to me; anyone
| can make a trade that's up 30% in a year with public
| information - they can also easily lose as much. It is only
| problematic when they consistently win by large percentages on
| the majority of their trades, and this doesn't appear to do
| that kind of statistical analysis of average returns?
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| > this doesn't appear to do that kind of statistical analysis
| of average returns?
|
| Exactly, and you had to be really unlucky not to have
| significant returns over the past year.
|
| Has anyone looked at their managed retirement find lately? I
| wouldn't be surprised if you see 30% even in a medium-risk
| fund.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Your theory: If you pay Pelosi more, she'll stop insider
| trading. On top of her +$100M net worth, where her salary pales
| in comparison to trading gains. You just have to pay people
| more so they stop abusing the system.
|
| Found the Congressperson here.
| sakopov wrote:
| Are you saying that these insane leveraged trades won't be
| happening if elected officials are compensated more? That is a
| preposterous assumption! You're right, trading isn't the issue.
| Greed and abuse of power are, however.
| unholiness wrote:
| A lot of justified negativity in this thread.
|
| On the flip side, are there any congresspeople who have publicly
| put all their assets in a blind trust? Any who have advanced
| bills requiring this of their colleagues?
|
| The solution to problems like this is elections, and you would
| think "My opponent is insider trading while I literally can't"
| would make a great campaign ad.
| sakopov wrote:
| > For example, Pelosi in Dec 22 was against more stimulus. Her
| husband buys deep ITM TSLA and AAPL calls that day. December
| 23rd, she is suddenly for stimulus again, with those same
| companies ralling 5%, giving her an instant +30 return.
|
| > Congressman Gottheimer is absolutely an incredible options
| trader. He's been selling calls at peaks on $MSFT all 2021, &
| seemingly buying back the contracts on dips. This in blocks of
| $250,000 - $5,000,000, which is incredible size given the amount
| of $MSFT shares he owns. For ex, on 02-12 he sold 500k $MSFT $160
| strike expiring 06/18/2021. On that same day, he bought deep ITM
| calls of $1M-5M at $145 expiring 03/19/2021. The whale caught
| both of his movements as well.
|
| This is fucking unreal.
| mattferderer wrote:
| I would like more oversight here but I don't know if these are
| great examples. I do (without evidence) believe a lot of these
| people use insider information.
|
| Pelosi's husband has been very bullish for a long time on
| Tesla, Apple & tech in general I do believe.
|
| Gottheimer did what I think is a Bull Call spread which means
| in February, after a crazy run up in market prices in January,
| he bet that MSFT would go up a little more but would eventually
| come back down or at least trade sideways & not go over $160 by
| 6/18. If he sold his ITM calls before March or in early March,
| he probably did good. If he held on to them until closer to the
| 19th, he might have got crushed. This doesn't say when he sold.
| A lot of people argued stocks were overbought after January.
| Also, if he owns a large share of MSFT it's common to sell
| calls when you want to keep your shares but think the price is
| at the top or there is a lot of volatility that will soon go
| away. It's a way to earn some income without selling.
|
| - None of this is financial advice & I'm fairly ignorant on
| this topic.
| maest wrote:
| unusualwhales are incentivised to talk their own book so it's
| safe to assume they've cherry picked these examples.
|
| The honest way to see if politicians get an outsized return
| from this type of trading is to run a backtest, with
| appropriate hedges where you buy whenever anyone buys and
| sell whenever anyone sells and hold for a medium amount of
| time (3-6 weeks seems reasonable). unusualwhales know this so
| the fact that this sort of analysis is missing is telling. In
| particular, note how they provide stats for what the trading
| trends are, but not for the outsized performance.
|
| The charts at the end of the article are a lot less
| impressive and they don't obviously look better than random.
| guiriduro wrote:
| In addition to possibly using inside information, they also
| make the news, ie. potentially profit from policy news that
| they themselves are making.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Pelosi 's husband has been very bullish for a long time on
| Tesla, Apple & tech in general I do believe._
|
| I'm curious where you are reading about Paul Pelosi's stock
| picks. Regardless, so what? He has no business owning and/or
| trading shares of companies the person he shares a bed with
| has influence over.
| mattferderer wrote:
| His name comes up often enough in Finance News Headlines.
| He makes large transactions. Nancy's office has to file
| those, so they make great headlines. A quick search should
| give you thousands of them.
|
| I have no position on your 2nd sentence. I agree in
| philosophy but acknowledge the details are complicated.
| pc86 wrote:
| Does Nancy Pelosi have influence over Tesla?
|
| Even if you take a pretty hard-line attitude about members
| of Congress being prohibited from doing things like trading
| their own portfolios, it's hard to make a cogent argument
| that Paul Pelosi, who is by all measures a private citizen,
| should be restricted from trading specific stocks.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Well, when the order of events is "A committee which Pelosi
| is member of is discussing the large contract on the VR
| helmets for the military -- Pelosi's husband buys MSFT -- The
| committee anounces that the contract goes to MSFT -- MSFT
| stock rises", and the pattern keeps repeating, it _is_
| evidence, albeit circumstantial.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Seriously, I am very serious about preventing conflicts of
| interest and insider trading. But Microsoft is a terrible
| example, they are extremely diversified. The contract was
| announced 3/31 and it's obvious that it had no particular
| impact on its share price since that date when looking at
| its peers: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/MSFT:NASDAQ
| ?comparison=...
| pc86 wrote:
| It went from approximately $235 to $250, which is about
| 6%. On calls, especially short-dated ones, that can
| easily be a 40-50% gain. I've got a number of different
| MSFT LEAPS in my portfolio and they all went up 15%+ on
| that news.
| jonhohle wrote:
| That seems like the definition of material, non-public
| information. In the past I don't think Congress was bound
| to the same trading rules as the general public (blech),
| but last I checked, Mr. Pelosi is not in Congress.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Congress is bound by the same rules as the general
| public, they just aren't legally insiders.
|
| Insider trading requires not only material, non-public
| but also some kind of duty of confidentiality to the
| company you are trading.
|
| Congress doesn't have that type of relationship, so they
| are not insiders. Their spouses aren't either.
|
| There are some additional rules that apply to people who
| gain knowledge in an official capacity[1], but these were
| enacted fairly recently and haven't been effective at
| keeping Congress from trading using the non-public
| information that they receive.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| tomcam wrote:
| Well they aren't legally insiders because... they made
| the rules.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Not really, they aren't insiders because when courts
| interpreted the rather vague laws against fraud in the
| context of securities trading, they didn't interpret
| Congress trading based on knowledge received in their job
| as fraud.
| jonhohle wrote:
| This falls under misappropriation which does not require
| the reader to any relationship to the company being
| traded, only material, non-public information.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| I'm not aware of any case law finding that Congress using
| their knowledge is misappropriation. Do you have any
| examples to the contrary?
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _This is fucking unreal._
|
| How do you think so many people on government salaries become
| super rich, whilst supposedly working for the government?
| gadders wrote:
| I don't know if specific trades are sketchy or legit, but I do
| think there should be some sort of log of net worth when you
| join congress, senate, houses of parliament etc and politicians
| be expected to explain any large gains over their time in
| office.
| [deleted]
| chris11 wrote:
| My employer has 105b plans available if you want to trade
| outside of trading windows. I think we should have something
| like that for politicians. Insider trading would be less of
| an issue if politicians and spouses were required to publicly
| announce trades 30-90 days before they were made. I don't
| think that would impact long term trading strategies, and I
| think it's reasonable to ask politicians to give up short
| term trading.
| chrisbolt wrote:
| Like https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances ?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Frankly, it's insider trading and should be
| restricted/prosecuted as such.
| tgb wrote:
| I think the insider trading aspects of this are the lesser
| concern. There's substantial debate over whether insider
| trading is actually a net negative for society or whether
| it makes sense to regulate, surprisingly. [1]
|
| The primary concern here is whether or not this influences
| their decisions when it comes to governing, whether they
| choose the option that is most profitable rather than best
| for their country.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Arguments
| _for_...
| fighterpilot wrote:
| There will almost always be plausible deniability. Needs to
| be banned.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think the insider trading laws don't require motive -
| just that they had private information or used their
| position of influence and that they benefited from a
| related trade. The rules for executives at companies
| usually requires them to file any trade plans related to
| their company stock prior to actually making the trade,
| which would at least prevent the short term plays like
| the Pelosi example. Even tech people at trading companies
| are subject to restrictions in what they can trade, even
| if they aren't looking at the financial data.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Stupid insider trading, where someone gets a tip and then
| trades on it, is well enforced. It's easy to catch _ex
| post facto_ and the people doing it are generally of the
| mind that everyone is insider trading and so they 're
| unlikely to get caught.
|
| The problem is in the grey areas. Take the Pelosi
| example. The material nonpublic information was her
| personal policy position. Assuming she acted purely
| venally, are your own intentions insider information? If
| I know I'm going to get Chipotle for lunch tomorrow, is
| it insider trading to buy Chipotle shares?
|
| If, on the other hand, her husband took a conversation he
| had with her about policy and then traded on it, _that_
| would be insider trading. Unless they did it over text
| message, however, the odds of proving it are zilch.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "personal policy position"
|
| Once she announces it in the media, wouldn't it be a
| professional policy opinion? CEOs are similar. They can
| believe what they want, but what they say to the media
| can be punished (like Elon was). The real sticking point
| is how is she of one opinion then flip to the complete
| opposite the next day without giving a reason. If they
| have to report their intended trades then it could avoid
| this short term play.
|
| Spouses and household members are held to the same
| restrictions as the regulated individual, regardless of
| the conversation or not. The only reason it's hard to
| prove is because they are in a position of power. The SEC
| would jump on any normal people doing the same thing.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Regarding the Pelosi example, it's even worse than what
| was suggested above. The TSLA trade was placed a few days
| before Biden came out and said they planned to buy EVs
| for government vehicles, which was an announcement that
| directly caused TSLA to spike up the second it was
| broadcast to the market.
|
| Again though there's plausible deniability, as you say.
| It needs to just be outright banned.
| koube wrote:
| Dec 22 democrats had reached an agreement to provide $600 in
| stimulus, this was an agreement that had buy in and should have
| been pushed forward.
|
| Dec 23 Trump announced support for a $2000 stimulus, changing
| the political calculus, in favor of democrats, who did
| eventually push through the remaining $1400 in a separate
| package.
|
| Pelosi's strategic change is not a change that happened in a
| vacuum. Trump's announcement was all over the news and was the
| single most important event in the political world that day,
| not Pelosi's husband buying calls. Contextualizing this event
| around Pelosi's husband is misleading.
|
| Ok downvote my comment all you want but this is well documented
| and was less than 6 months ago, and frankly it's surprising
| that people forgot how impactful this event was. People are
| still criticizing Biden over the additional check being 1400
| instead of 2000.
| lordnacho wrote:
| As a member of Congress she has much better colour on what's
| about to happen than everyone else. She can basically count
| up the votes before before anyone else.
|
| I'd rather live in a world where reps are squeaky clean. It's
| much better than one where we make up some rules where people
| who come right up to the line end up smelling bad, and then
| everyone is born complaining about the corruption and
| enduring it with no recourse.
|
| Ultimately it's a rules vs discretion (aka judgement)
| question.
| koube wrote:
| Ok yes she did count the votes, determine that this was the
| highest number that could be negotiated, and then she
| worked to push the bill forward as she should have. And
| then the president tweeted out of nowhere which changed
| things. Trump's unpredictability is well known for anyone
| who has read the news at least once in the past five years.
| All of this is above board. What do you want her to do?
| Forget all of her policy goals and act against all of her
| stated interests because her husband bought calls the
| previous day?
|
| I don't know if you remember, but the amount of stimulus
| remained 600, so Pelosi was on money on what was
| politically possible. The remaining 1400 only was possible
| after the slimmest of senate majorities after the Georgia
| runoffs.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'd want her to not speculate on the event, it looks bad.
| The system doesn't just depend on people not cheating, it
| depends on confidence in the system, judged by people who
| aren't experts in either trading or politics.
| koube wrote:
| What did she do here that constitutes speculation? All
| she did was push for the highest stimulus she could get.
| gowld wrote:
| Her husband, who is her legal business partner, should
| not be trading at all. It's just that simple. They should
| buy long-term bonds.
| wpietri wrote:
| Whatever the behind-the-scenes truth, I think the appearance of
| conflicting interests is a problem regardless. For a lot of
| elected offices and high public service positions, I think
| their wealth should be put into a blind trust, one constrained
| by law to buy broad, boring things like index funds.
|
| That would surely be a problem for some individuals. But I
| don't think it's a systemic problem. We only need to find
| 0.00013% of the US population to fill the Senate and House
| together; surely there are that many people who are both
| competent and willing to put the public interest ahead of their
| own.
| sneak wrote:
| I think this presupposes the lie that the government is by,
| of, or for the (majority of the) people.
|
| This is a closed system, and most are not allowed anywhere
| near the control room.
|
| It, including these trades, is working as intended.
| munk-a wrote:
| > It, including these trades, is working as intended.
|
| You can view the US in a lot of cynical ways but it was not
| created as a vehicle to allow the wealthy to continue to
| gain wealth at the expense of the poor. Insider trading
| between congressmen using their posts to fleece the public
| was never an intent of the government.
| jessaustin wrote:
| That is precisely the reason that Madison and his
| collaborators wrote the constitution (with debates kept
| secret from the public). The nation already had popular
| rule and a federal organization in 1781. The problem for
| the rich was that state legislatures kept helping out the
| majority of their voters, changing various rules about
| repayment of debts and so on. The constitution put an end
| to all that, as it was intended to do.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| It was at least created for them to at least preserve
| their wealth. In the debates leading up the creation of
| the Senate, here is a typical argument:
|
| "...our government ought to secure the permanent
| interests of the country against innovation. Landholders
| ought to have a share in the government, to support these
| invaluable interests and to balance and check the other.
| They ought to be so constituted as to protect the
| minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate,
| therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these
| purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.
| Various have been the propositions; but my opinion is,
| the longer they continue in office, the better will these
| views be answered"
|
| https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-10-02-
| 004...
| triceratops wrote:
| > it was not created as a vehicle to allow the wealthy to
| continue to gain wealth at the expense of the poor
|
| I mean the American revolution was spearheaded by wealthy
| land and slave owners who were tired of taxes.
| smt88 wrote:
| The US is explicitly not about the majority. The Senate and
| Presidency are both anti-democratic institions where land
| controls votes.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree that _ALL_ government employees, their spouses and
| companies should own no individual stocks until they leave
| office /job. However, the politicians are just the tip of the
| iceberg in regards to the rigged game of Wall Street. We have
| bigger fish to fry but no one seems to like fish anymore.
| hyperpape wrote:
| I agree in spirit, but this is overbroad. The various
| branches of government employ millions of people. A cop, or
| VHA nurse, or my friend who works a non-managerial role at
| the EPA can own stock. It's the decision-makers who were
| should be concerned about. That group extends beyond
| congress, but doesn't contain literally every government
| employee.
| delusional wrote:
| I don't think normal middle class government workers owning
| stocks is a real problem. I get where you're coming from
| (technically they could have inside information), but it's
| not nearly as impaction as the elected officials having
| very large swings hinge on their own policies.
| smt88 wrote:
| I think it's easy to rephrase this as follows:
|
| People should not be able to make bets on matters over which
| they secretly control the outcome.
|
| That means any federal official should have their investments
| behind a blind trust of some sort, no exceptions.
| Jommi wrote:
| Edit it to "secret bets" or even "non publicly announced".
| smt88 wrote:
| I'd have to think it through more, but my gut says that I
| don't care if the _bet_ is secret. Although I would
| separately support a law that all elected officials must
| have extreme transparency into their finances.
|
| I think people should give up all of their right to
| privacy (when it comes to business, finances, travel, and
| even conversations) when they acquire a large amount of
| power. In my head, a US senator would have that much
| power and that little privacy, whereas a US
| representative in the House would not.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Isn't this already an illegal conflict of interest?
|
| Are federal representatives immune?
| infinite8s wrote:
| Congress excluded itself from insider-trading laws.
| Convenient, eh?
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| Can anyone cite a source for this? I don't doubt the
| legitimacy, but would like to know more about it.
| vageli wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be true any longer with the STOCK act.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
| nitrogen wrote:
| _We only need to find 0.00013% of the US population_
|
| Maybe we should use sortition then instead of elections? What
| could be more democratic than random average people (meeting
| some criteria) taking a turn at the wheel?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| A significant percentage of random average people have no
| practical understanding of economics, and no ability to
| think of consequences to policy.
|
| Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the
| currently serving congress if current policy is anything to
| go by.
| voldacar wrote:
| > A significant percentage of random average people have
| no practical understanding of economics, and no ability
| to think of consequences to policy.
|
| unfortunately, this is also true of our elected officials
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the
| currently serving congress if current policy is anything
| to go by._
|
| I think they understand just fine, most of the time, but
| are more interested in enriching themselves and their
| cronies than looking out for their constituents or the
| health of the system as a whole.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Regardless of whether one may like the initial selection
| criteria or not, what you describe is precisely why the
| country (USA) was supposed to be led by land owning free
| white men. The assumption being that people that fit that
| criteria, plausibly possessed a requisite initial
| selection criteria set of skills and knowledge that would
| constitute the pool of best qualified people to run a
| government in the common interest. From that pool of
| people their peers would further select amongst each
| other using those very same abilities, knowledge, skills,
| and capacities to further choose the utmost best person
| to lead.
|
| I realize that just saying that may cause some
| consternation among some, but it is objectively the best
| selection system one could possibly devise, for any
| people anywhere, regardless of whether people like it or
| not.
|
| It's not even a selection system that is not used all
| over the place from choices within your family where
| there are certain prerequisites like being an adult or a
| parent or having to be a member of the union in order to
| vote on union matters, or having achieved certain
| certifications and qualifications before you can make
| decisions about building a highway bridge.
|
| It is and has not been a net benefit to any of us that
| "democracy" was first imposed and then expanded when the
| founders of the USA were very explicit about the fact
| that democracy was a recipe for disaster and would
| invariably cause destruction ... as it has. Personally, I
| would very much have been ok with benefitting from
| properly qualified people making decision for me that I
| have no competent capacity to make for myself, rather
| than having lived in a society where everyone thinks they
| are equally smart and competent and my vote counts the
| same as some fool who does not know that a week is seven
| days (something I heard someone in her early 20s say
| yesterday. She thought the week excludes the weekend)
| spoonjim wrote:
| The destruction to the Founder's political vision didn't
| come from expanding the franchise, it came direct
| democracy. The idea was explicitly that the average voter
| was completely unqualified to choose the President, and
| that the only question the voter would be asked is: "Who
| in your town should make decisions for you?" That person
| would go to your state legislature, which would vote for
| your state's electors, who would go and deliberatively
| decide the President.
| dysrend wrote:
| Democracy[?]republic
|
| The career politicians, intelligencia, and c-suite
| technocrats have been running shit for the past half
| century or more - you see where it's gotten us, to the
| _ruin_ you describe.
| rocqua wrote:
| > Regardless of whether one may like the initial
| selection criteria or not, what you describe is precisely
| why the country (USA) was supposed to be led by land
| owning free white men.
|
| > I realize that just saying that may cause some
| consternation among some, but it is objectively the best
| selection system one could possibly devise
|
| Combining these two statements suggests that you would
| advocate for white supremacy. Is that a correct deduction
| of mine? I would rather ask than just jump to
| conclusions.
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| > but it is objectively the best selection system one
| could possibly devise
|
| Your determination of objectivity seems a little...
| subjective.
|
| Maybe this was objectively best _at the time_ but at
| minimum the race part seems to no longer be true.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| What about both?
|
| Take the existing system and have the house and Senate
| argue every official act to the sortition for a vote. How
| would this be worse than the current crony capitalism we
| suffer under?
| rocqua wrote:
| Perhaps have a third stage (after the senate) that is the
| sortition that has to approve a bill.
| sneeze-slayer wrote:
| Hah, Philip K. Dick explored this a bit in "Solar Lottery."
| In the book it's a bit absurd, but still an interesting
| take on a "randomized" government.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree, I have long thought sortition might be the right
| answer. Right along with leveraging modern technology to
| reset our representative-to-citizen ratio to something like
| the constitution originally prescribed.
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| The thing is, the last few times I recall when some have
| tried more direct democracy (Brexit, a few referenda in
| europe, california ballot measures) it seems to lead to
| decisions that seem rather sub-optimal. I am not sure the
| random citizen might actually be better at governing that
| a professional politician.
| dkarl wrote:
| I think random people would either be shallow and selfish
| about it or be so intimidated by their responsibilities
| that they would be at the mercy of knowledgable advisors
| chosen from the same small class of people who run the
| government now.
| psychlops wrote:
| Just require them to announce their trades publicly 24 hours
| in advance. And let them manage their own finances. All these
| shenanigan's would disappear.
| gibolt wrote:
| That doesn't work. If they are aware of a huge non-public
| deal, the market may react based on their trade, but not
| nearly as much as when the deal goes public.
| psychlops wrote:
| It would help. There are already funds that track the
| money of politicians and invest accordingly. If they
| submitted a large options trade, the funds would front
| run them and take away much of the profit.
| ed_balls wrote:
| Their children or other family would do the deals.
| m463 wrote:
| If I was a foreign government, I would just monitor these
| announcements and impoverish the US politicians.
| gowld wrote:
| Good. That will discourage them from manipulating the
| market.
|
| No need for foreign government -- the whole world can do
| it.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If I was a foreign government, I would want to enrich US
| politicians, so they became favorable to my causes.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Why not just prohibit members of Congress of owning stock?
| They are some of the most powerful people in the world. Why
| is it so much to ask that a Senator or especially
| Representative serving in the most powerful legislative
| body in the world just take a cash position for 2-6 years?
| FabHK wrote:
| I think it would be perfectly fine to let them have their
| money in broad index fund, or maybe an actively managed
| fund which should also be open to every citizen. Allow
| withdrawals etc. only once a month or so to avoid market
| timing.
| klyrs wrote:
| I fully agree, and I'd like to extend it to their
| families as well. But... you ask "why not" and the simple
| reason is that only they could enact such a law. And even
| when the laws are in place -- Trump ran roughshod over
| the foreign emoluments clause, and there were zero
| consequences. Why would the richest and most powerful
| Democrats set such a precedent, only to have it turned
| around when they're in power and stand to profit?
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yes - it definitely seems like it should be more or a
| "let's hope we can see both" type thing rather than an
| "either or type" thing. I think publicizing existing
| holdings is huge in that it can be done based on existing
| data sets as unusualwhale has shown and it is something
| that "we the people" can do, today - perhaps just by
| sharing this article.
|
| Eradicating politicians doing insider trading is a much
| longer slog that we are mostly just hoping "those with
| the power" will enact against their own self interests.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I agree. Their wealth should be in a blind trust (unless
| they run the company or farm or whatever).
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I am not at all opposed to this strategy either, but as
| you seem to imply, it would really need to be hardened
| against other corruption and schemes like that the blind
| trust has to be run by the same government office.
|
| It is why I like the fact that they just have to announce
| their stock trades ahead of time, it still allows them
| autonomy, but also there is no sense in front running
| them if they are not trading on insider knowledge. Their
| performance should essentially be in line with the
| market, not like Mr. Gottheimer that seems to have
| tripled his net worth in FY2020.
| godelski wrote:
| Because investments are still a great way to hold your
| savings. The problem here isn't that they have
| investments (e.g. a 401k), it is that they are acting on
| insider information. Which is illegal to everyone else.
| At _minimum_ they should be held to the same standards.
| Though I think most people agree that they should be held
| to _higher_ standards, which gives suggestions like a
| blind trust. And obviously strict rules of if they break
| the blind part that they get jail time.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It's not insider information. You might consider it
| material non-public information, which you can't trade on
| in Europe, but in the US insider trading has a much more
| narrow definition: roughly it has to come from the
| insiders of the company. If your friend at Microsoft
| tells you that they won some massive contract, you can't
| trade on it. If you overhear that news in a cafe, you
| can. If your friend at the government tells you they're
| going to agree on a big contract with Microsoft, I don't
| know if you'd be allowed or not but if you weren't
| allowed I don't think it would be insider trading.
|
| Anyway, that obviously isn't legal advice. And I agree
| that people should expect legislators to act with high
| integrity, but that's not really how they vote.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Honest question: If I work at Microsoft and I know we'll
| launch a product that will kill competitor X, am I
| allowed to short the X stock?
|
| That more analogous to the politician trading. They _do_
| have inside information, but it 's not from inside the
| company they're trading.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Too harsh. A blind trust would be quite enough.
| efitz wrote:
| I oppose this idea simply because most people's'
| retirement is held in investments now; I even think that
| congressional pensions have been dialed way back IIRC. I
| much prefer the "notify publicly well in advance"
| approach.
| jkepler wrote:
| I think they're too aware that with real dollar inflation
| probably running at least 10% per year (per Michael
| Saylor), they'd loose too much value for them to consent
| to holding only cash for 2 to 6 years. For every $100K
| they had, they'd end up holding something near $81K down
| to $53K in real purchasing power... and that's assuming
| they were content to only stay in power one term.
| coltsfan wrote:
| that's exactly the point. it's almost a game for rich
| people to pump up their legacies or because they're just
| bored. you want them gone. When they are gone, there will
| be plenty of people left that choose never to buy another
| stock again for the rest of their lives. No law, just a
| personal code. Because the influence and power obviously
| last after you leave office. Monks and samurai can exist.
| Then so can a congressional Bushido. You just have to
| stop voting for people who think about their stocks all
| day while sitting at meetings.
| xienze wrote:
| > Why is it so much to ask that a Senator or especially
| Representative serving in the most powerful legislative
| body in the world just take a cash position for 2-6
| years?
|
| I agree in principle, but a lot of these people literally
| serve until they drop dead, which is a different problem
| with congress. Might be a bit much to tell someone not to
| invest for 40+ years.
| cpwright wrote:
| That is bad policy. There is a segment of middle/upper
| class Americans who own stock; anyone with a retirement
| plan that funds it. Forcing middle/upper class
| legislatures into a cash position instead of stocks would
| make them less, not more connected to similarly placed
| people. If they can't own stock does that mean they'll
| just instead invest in real estate which can be even more
| conflicted?
|
| Of course, if they held widely diversified Index funds
| there would be fewer conflicts - but not zero as
| evidenced by legislators trading around COVID briefings.
| toss1 wrote:
| Or perhaps better yet, simply make all trades public in
| real-time.
|
| Trades could be scrutinized for insider trading by both the
| SEC and independent traders/firms, just as there are
| independent services scrutinizing the crypto blockchains.
|
| Insider trading could then even plausibly be legalized by
| eliminating the advantage of insider trading (it'd have to
| be based on a lot of study of the data). If we (or other
| funds) can setup triggers to act on the trades of insiders
| as soon as they hit the wire, the market will move against
| them, and we can also share arguably the same advantage by
| doing so.
| pessimizer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act#Amendment
|
| When the public was angry, Congress passed the STOCK act.
| After the news cycle was over, they repealed disclosure
| unanimously.
| djrogers wrote:
| Disclosure still applies for Congress (and POTUS/VP), it
| was repealed for 28k other gov't employees.
|
| Also, it's mandated 45 days after trades - not in advance
| as many here are calling for.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not being specific enough made my comment misleading.
|
| "The amendment also eliminated the requirement for the
| creation of searchable, sortable database of information
| in reports, and the requirement that reports be done in
| electronic format, rather than on paper."
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yes - in addition - just have documentation sites like
| unusual whales which track the trades, holdings and profits
| of politicians - create infographics prior to every
| election and distribute them to existing voter
| information/polling prediction sites like real clear
| politics.
|
| Politicians already long on certain stocks can also profit
| from legislation that they are passing. Being privy to
| insider info which leads to continuing to stay long a stock
| is an advantage that wouldn't be detected by just sharing
| recent trades.
|
| In addition to trying to eradicate insider trading - just
| shedding light on existing holdings by US office holders
| will have a huge cleansing effect that will go a long way
| to showing potential biases/conflicts of interest.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I would love to believe that would make a difference, but
| in a hyperpartisan world where many vote based on a
| handful of ideological allegiances, how many would
| seriously be moved to change sides over something as
| small as a little corruption? Or is this something that
| would be more at the primary level, where it really is
| more about personality and personal qualities than party?
|
| In any case, the Trump movement's whole response to this
| kind of thing was a combination of denial and "lol
| everyone does it", and it seems like that was enough for
| many in that camp.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Or is this something that would be more at the primary
| level, where it really is more about personality and
| personal qualities than party?
|
| >> For sure there are many factors that influence
| someone's vote. I think you're right - its more likely to
| cause leadership rotation within the parties where the
| rest of the factors are more similar (i.e. stance on gun
| rights, etc.). The challenge today is that incumbent
| politicians within their own party tend to have great
| name recognition among voters - but are more likely to be
| in the pockets of corporations. This would enable
| challengers within the party to potentially have an issue
| they can highlight.
|
| "lol everyone does it"
|
| >> And perhaps articles prove in a data science-y way
| that perhaps this is true - many politicians are doing
| it.
| rocqua wrote:
| There are still voters on the fence / differences in
| voter turn-out that mean politicians worry about scandal.
| The main effect is that these politicians will probably
| be replaced by different ones from the same party.
| Moreover, other politicians, hoping not to be replaced,
| might stop doing blatant insider trading.
| lend000 wrote:
| Why should they be held under less scrutiny than CEO's?
| They typically have to clear their stock sales with the SEC
| months in advance.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Also as a regular fintech worker, I have to get internal
| approval from my employer for anything I do. Why can
| government representatives trade willy nilly without any
| oversight?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| If you wrote the rules for yourself, they would probably
| be more lenient :)
| icedchai wrote:
| Do you actually "have to"? How would they know if you
| don't? Basically, is it an honor system?
| psychlops wrote:
| 20 years ago it used to be the honor system. Now all the
| records are connected, many make it a requirement of
| employment to move all accounts into the firm.
| dmurray wrote:
| Also, it's mandated by the SEC. There are obligations on
| you, your employer, and (if your broker is in the US)
| your broker to ask you, and to inform each other.
|
| So it's kind of on the honour system - your broker
| probably won't ask you for payslips proving you _don 't_
| work in the industry - but a lot of people are
| incentivized not to let it happen.
| FabHK wrote:
| When I was in that situation, I had to disclose all
| brokerage accounts to my employer, and authorise the
| brokers to send copies of the account statements to the
| employer's compliance department.
| somethoughts wrote:
| That's true too! Finance sites like Marketwatch and Yahoo
| have insider transaction logs for each company when you
| search their ticker symbol [1]. There should be a tab to
| view "US office holder and their immediate relatives"
| transaction log page as well listed for each ticker.
|
| [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AAPL/insider-
| transactions/
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I speak for a lot of people that while I agree with you in
| principle, the sudden interest in this idea in Republican
| circles after the prior administration's absolute mockery of
| conflict of interest and self-dealing laws seems
| hypocritical.
| jb775 wrote:
| Can you provide any sources for your claims that prove
| Trump administration personnel directly profited off any
| supposed self dealings? Or are you just pulling this out of
| your ass bc you are a lib? Also, who else specifically do
| you "speak for"?
|
| This article isn't even about self-serving decisions that
| may benefit politicians down the road...it's about
| politicians who are actively using politician-privy inside
| information for short term profit at the expense of their
| constituents. But hey let's keep crying about orange man
| bad!
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The "orange man" was bad.
|
| This is getting tired. If you are interested in his
| cronies' self dealings just look it up. They did all of
| these things and more but also did them more explicitly.
| Which is a bit more honest in a way I guess?
|
| But the worst part about 2017-2020 was the way he cozied
| up to enemies of democracy, undermined democracy himself
| and made a point of sowing and igniting division.
|
| Back to the article, this behaviour is despicable and
| should be punished for everyone, D or R.
| jb775 wrote:
| > just look it up. They did all of these things and more
|
| Can you provide a single example with a source that
| proves this? And please provide an example of how he
| "undermined democracy". Sounds like you watch a lot of
| CNN.
|
| I agree it should be punished equally not depending on D
| or R.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Sure, here's one for the former (link below) and for the
| second you might remember the refusal to accept the
| election results and months of egging his supporters on,
| culminating in an attack on the US Capitol and the deaths
| of 4 or more people.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/10/us/trump-
| prop...
| munk-a wrote:
| Laws need to come into force sometime - and as long as
| we're not going to get a ping-pong law that's repealed as
| soon as republicans get into power then I don't mind it
| happening while democrats hold the torch. I am well aware
| of the hypocrisy some folks show on this topic but,
| honestly, it's a good law no matter who is in power and if
| we're just trying to be petty we won't get anything done.
| [deleted]
| Avalaxy wrote:
| Would it really help? You can't restrict their complete
| social circles as well. All it takes is 1 willing friend who
| will happily accept your stock tips ahead of large
| announcements and who's willing to give you a share of the
| profits in return.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's true for all insider trading yet we at least attempt
| to limit that.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| If you took away the politicians way of getting rich then
| what motivation would people have to be politicians? /s
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'm thinking of running for city council because I actually
| give a shit about civil service, the importance of good
| government, and I think I'm a better option than some of
| the absolute nutcases even running for _mayor_ in my city.
|
| Some people actually care.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Power!
|
| I don't like this corruption, but there are many worse
| things our rulers could do.
| yumraj wrote:
| I'm curious if any of this falls under the definition of
| _insider trading_. It should, but I think it doesn 't and which
| is why SEC doesn't get involved in these.
|
| Does anyone know?
| teh_infallible wrote:
| The SEC has long been selective about which rules they
| enforce and when.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| For a long time, Congress had an exemption to insider
| trading. They no longer do, but, insider trading still
| requires material non-public information about the company in
| question -- and Congressional acts are the most public thing
| possible. Betting that a company's stock will go up (or down)
| and then making it happen after you make the bet isn't
| insider trading, it's activist investing, and is totally
| legal.
| powersnail wrote:
| But if they bet first, wouldn't that makes them unfit for
| making decisions on where the contract should go? Shouldn't
| the government official be excused from this decision
| making process if they have a personal interest in one of
| the candidate?
| YinglingLight wrote:
| >Congressional acts are the most public thing possible
|
| Not when said action occurs a week before the Congressional
| act is announced. Is this HN thread flooded with bots or
| something? Have never seen this level of sympathy for
| politicians.
| sneak wrote:
| What they said was objectively true, regardless of your
| opinions for or against the situation.
| devmor wrote:
| No, it was not true. It was predicated on the falsehood
| that congressional acts are announced as they are
| decided.
| LanceH wrote:
| The current count for who has pledged to vote for what is
| highly relevant and _private_ information.
| skohan wrote:
| Maybe it's legal, but it should absolutely not be. There's
| too much risk that a legislator's personal interest will
| run counter to the interests of the public, and the system
| should have safeguards against this.
| blunte wrote:
| Unfortunately that risk is very much in play even without
| stock trading. Politicians often appear to be working
| purely to stay in office and gain whatever side benefits
| they can along the way, and to establish a very lucrative
| lobby landing after they leave office.
|
| It is all practically very corrupt, viewed from most
| angles. The few well-meaning politicians either don't get
| elected or don't stay in office, because it costs too
| much to get there and stay there (funding); so to get
| there and stay there, you have to play the game. And
| playing the game means ensuring your wealthy donors get
| what they want from you in terms of legislation.
| skohan wrote:
| Yeah that's all fine, but you can still work to outlaw
| the most blatant conflicts of interest. Government isn't
| perfect anywhere, but for instance in northern europe
| they're doing at least a tiny bit better on that front.
| jb775 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they can't be charged with insider trading
| for some loophole reason. It's 100% insider trading though.
| US politicians and their families shouldn't be allowed to
| buy/sell any stocks as a condition of public office. And they
| shouldn't be able to accept revolving door money after
| leaving office as well.
| jwilber wrote:
| Casually making millions, almost certainly illegally, while her
| district suffers as one of the nation's most severe when it
| comes to income inequality. [0]
|
| Every day I become more and more convinced that all politicians
| are basically the same - chasing self-interests, power, and
| prestige.
|
| [0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/income-inequality-in-
| califo...
| ABeeSea wrote:
| California has high inequality compared to other states
| because the rich people don't want to live in those other
| states. It's not like people are rushing to move to
| Mississippi or West Virginia.
|
| It's easy to have low inequality when everyone is very poor
| like West Virginia.
| disgrunt wrote:
| Here's a recent Pelosi options trade with the Microsoft AR
| contract announcement. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/nancy-
| pelosis-h...
| SilasX wrote:
| >Her husband buys deep ITM TSLA and AAPL calls that day.
|
| Stupid question: if you were expecting an upswing in a stock,
| wouldn't you get the most returns from an out of the money
| option? For a deep ITM you're paying the same as the underlying
| stock plus a tiny premium -- you might as well just buy the
| stock.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| A large swing increases the IV which increases the premium
| (since the stock is now more likely to swing back down). Also
| decreases the risk in case the trade moves against you.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Sure, but if that's your investment thesis you'll get a
| better return by buying an ATM call than a (relatively
| safer) deep ITM call.
| SilasX wrote:
| But then you'd own the option so you'd benefit from the
| volatility and can quickly cash out, right?
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Yes, you cash out the options when the IV spikes when
| swings up.
| SilasX wrote:
| So, back to the original question: wouldn't OTM options
| make more sense in their position?
| ABeeSea wrote:
| If the bet is wrong, OTM options expire worthless. ITM
| options give you less risk, but for a premium (you buy
| fewer contracts with the same amount of money). But still
| with more leverage than outright buying the stock.
|
| This is captured in the concept of Delta one of the
| "greeks" which is a parameter in the black scholes
| equation and solution that tries to measure the pricing
| movement of the option relative to the price movement of
| the stock. Owning stock has a delta of 1. ITM options
| have a delta closer to 1 but not exactly 1, OTM options
| have a delta closer to 0, but not exactly 0. ATM options
| of a delta around .5.
| SilasX wrote:
| Fair enough, but then if you're having to hedge that much
| against downside risk, it doesn't feel like insider
| trading. The whole problem with insider trading is that
| have special knowledge of which way it's going to go. At
| the point where you're having to protect against the
| possibility of being so wrong, that doesn't feel like
| acting on insider knowledge, and it's more like
| "interested outsider" trading.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| I personally don't think it was insider trading so in
| that sense I completely agree with youx
| onemiketwelve wrote:
| An insider trade like this isn't about managing risk and
| things expiring worthless, it's about maximizing expected
| value while not making it too sus.
|
| If you bought a deep itm call, it would behave almost
| exactly like owning a share. The stock goes up 5% , your
| call goes up 5% + 1% let's say for the increased iv.
|
| If you felt like there was a 75% chance it would go up 5%
| and a 25% chance it goes flat or down, then your best
| expected value would be buying a otm call. The math would
| look something like ev= .75 * 400% + .25 * -100%
|
| And even then, nobody holds an option that went the wrong
| way to 0, so the -100% term would be less as well.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| I don't think it was an insider trade. But to use the
| articles example, Microsoft is so large and diversified
| that the headset contract news might not swing the stock
| price. Especially if there is broader negative market
| news.
| onemiketwelve wrote:
| It's not stupid. I'm questioning whether the original person
| understands what a deep itm call means. If you knew a stocks
| gonna move, you buy at the money or out of the money. Never
| would you buy _deep_ in the money. Makes no sense.
| mdoms wrote:
| > This is fucking unreal.
|
| It's USA. Corruption is the norm.
| tzs wrote:
| I don't know about the Gottheimer example, but their Pelosi
| example seems pretty far fetched.
|
| First of all, Congress passed a stimulus bill on Dec 21, the
| day before her husband bought those calls. Any 5% gain over the
| next couple of days or so is for more likely in response to
| that, and in anticipation of Trump signing the bill soon, than
| it due to Pelosi changing her mind about some possible future
| stimulus that hasn't even started being negotiated yet.
|
| Second, the 5% "rally" for AAPL only lasted a week. TSLA's rise
| lasted longer, but it was rising before this. The article
| doesn't say anything about whether or not they actually
| exercised their options to buy the stock, and then sold it to
| actually profit. If they didn't, then this "rally" had no real
| effect on them.
|
| Third, looking at other tech stocks, GOOG pretty much did
| nothing around or for a while after Dec 22. AMZN fell for a day
| or two, spiked up, came back to around what it was. FB was kind
| of like AMZN, but the spike was smaller and the fall was
| deeper. Looking beyond tech stocks, the Dow and the S&P 500
| don't show anything happening around the time. Most things
| continued the trends they had been on before.
|
| That suggests that Pelosi's change of heart about possible
| future stimulus bills didn't have much effect on most stocks.
| So why did they buy AAPL and TSLA? Even if they thought there
| would be an effect and wanted to exploit it, buying TSLA to do
| so makes no sense. AAPL makes a little more sense, but not
| much. AMZN or some other company whose products people would
| actually likely spend stimulus money on would make more sense.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Oligarchy in the U.S. is giving my mother country (Nigeria) a
| run for its money.
| tomcam wrote:
| Don't be silly. The U.S. is infinitely more corrupt than
| Nigeria. Forgive me, but there's just no comparison.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| hah! I am sympathetic -- the U.S. corruption is definitely
| more impactful to the world, and on a much greater scale.
| But it is also more covert and _usually_ doesn't creep into
| the level of person to person bribery in everyday
| interactions (IME).
| akudha wrote:
| Isn't Pelosi worth like 100 million or something? How much
| money is enough for these people? :(
|
| How quickly are these trades made public? Maybe we should just
| copy the congress people's trades and make some profit
| ourselves :P
| kennywinker wrote:
| Well, according to the US supreme court, money is speech - so
| more money more voice. As a concrete example, trump backed
| his own campaign to the tune of ~$66mil. Without it, I'm not
| sure he would have gotten as far as he did.
|
| (I'm not endorsing this, I'm just saying these are the rules
| of the game that's been set up)
|
| And to answer your second question - not quick enough for the
| public to act on it.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Clearance time varies but can take months. They've already
| collected profits by the time they are disclosed
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Any sum is fine as long as you got it honestly.
|
| The problem with Pelosi and others is that the money comes
| from abusing their power, and is in effect taken from other
| investors.
| Yoofie wrote:
| The most amazing thing is that these people keep getting
| re-elected. The voters are the ones allowing this to
| happen.
| eloff wrote:
| > How much money is enough for these people? :(
|
| What kind of attitude is that? If you have savings, one seeks
| a return on said savings by investing them. That's perfectly
| normal and rational behavior at all wealth levels.
| burkaman wrote:
| It is not rational once you have enough money for you and
| those you care about to be infinitely comfortable for the
| rest of your lives.
|
| Say you have $100,000 in the bank, and you want to spend
| $10,000. What's the best use of that money? For a normal
| self-interested person, a rational use would be to invest
| in whatever will give the largest return, in order to have
| enough money for living expenses, retirement, children,
| whatever.
|
| Now, say you have $100 million, and you want to spend $10
| million. What's the best use of that money? Seeking a
| purely financial return is completely pointless. It will
| have absolutely no impact on your life or future, or those
| of the people you care about. So as a person with a normal
| amount of self-interest who also cares about other things
| in the world, the most rational behavior would be to donate
| it to a cause you care about, or start some purposeful
| organization, or anything that will have a positive impact
| on something or someone you value. At this level of wealth,
| just making more money has no positive impact on anybody,
| even yourself.
|
| I guess it's possible that Pelosi is saving up in order to
| start a SpaceX competitor or buy an NBA team or something
| once she leaves Congress, but she's 81 so that seems
| unlikely.
| eloff wrote:
| You seem to have a fundamental misapprehension of
| capitalism.
|
| If you invest your capital, it's not being hoarded in a
| money bank like Scrooge McDuck. It's being put to use by
| the companies and institutions you invest in to provide
| products and services.
|
| Now I'm all for donating to charity, and it's a much
| better option than leaving massive wealth to your
| offspring, in my opinion.
|
| But investing your money is totally rational at any
| wealth level and it's good for society, and necessary for
| capitalism to function.
| solipsism wrote:
| _It 's being put to use by the companies and institutions
| you invest in to provide products and services._
|
| Why is that better than these companies living off their
| profits? You talk about it and if it's a given. It's not.
| philsnow wrote:
| > At this level of wealth, just making more money has no
| positive impact on anybody, even yourself.
|
| except that having capital makes it easier to gain more
| capital, so you could very well end up with more impact
| by aggressively investing for a few years before
| donating.
| burkaman wrote:
| Ok, say you invest that $10 million and a year later it's
| grown to $12 million. That's a decent return, but what
| was the opportunity cost of investing in Microsoft
| instead of, I don't know, funding 100 people on GoFundMe
| who are going to die if they can't afford surgery? The US
| government uses ~$10 million as the value of a human life
| when they analyze the cost/benefit of various policies.
| And it's a compounding investment - a dead person
| contributes nothing to society, but a living one might
| contribute quite a bit. That's just one example though,
| you could make an argument for any number of worthwhile
| uses for that money. Even something like venture capital
| or political organizing, which aren't exactly selfless
| philanthropic endeavors.
|
| And again, I'm talking about 10% of what's in the bank.
| You could donate $10 million, invest $60 million, and
| still have an absurd amount left to buy a few houses or
| whatever you want for yourself. All while risking
| nothing, if you hold onto $10 million or so to secure
| your future.
|
| My argument is that there's some threshold after which
| you have enough money to support yourself, and to invest
| to maintain your way of life, and to do something
| purposeful with the rest. And I think that threshold is
| below $100 million. I agree that it takes money to make
| money, but as you say, after "a few years" of investing,
| you do something with it. When does that happen? Do you
| need to hit a billion first?
| gowld wrote:
| "normal and rational" is different from "ethical or moral".
|
| "All wealth levels" are not the same.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| It is not immoral or unethical for somebody to have or
| earn more money than another. All people try to increase
| their wealth however they can. At lower income levels
| that is very difficult but the behavior is the same.
| eloff wrote:
| Let me strengthen my position by adding that it is also
| moral and ethical to seek a return by investing,
| providing you make reasonably ethical investments. Maybe
| not in the coal industry or whale meat industry - but any
| number of things can be perfectly ethical and even
| beneficial to society at large.
| akudha wrote:
| Does _reasonably ethical investments_ include using
| insider knowledge?
|
| Which is what these politicians seem to be doing. Sure it
| is not illegal, but is it ethical?
| eloff wrote:
| I'm not advocating for insider investing - which may well
| be going on here. That's obviously not ethical.
|
| I made a much more general statement in my comment, which
| you seemingly objected to.
| pc86 wrote:
| This took a left turn when someone started just
| complaining that people have a lot of money.
| dysrend wrote:
| It fails to comply in either case.
| blunte wrote:
| Let me phrase the question differently:
|
| How much money is enough if you already have $100M and to
| gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat?
|
| But even without changing the question, $100M invested in a
| very low risk manner will generate considerable cash flow
| (if you regularly take some profits). So without even
| spending your "savings", you can live very comfortably.
|
| However, a special thing happens when you are high net
| worth. You suddenly have a lot of lenders begging to loan
| you money at very low interest rates. They need a place to
| put money, and they know you have assets to cover any loan
| they might give you. So you, the wealthy individual with
| $100M in assets, CAN still go buy nice stuff even if your
| cash flow from your investments isn't huge.
|
| Honestly, unless you just need to show people how much
| money you can drop because you're so rich you don't care,
| you don't actually have to spend any of your money to live
| bigly.
| eloff wrote:
| > How much money is enough if you already have $100M and
| to gain more, you have to manipulate and cheat?
|
| Yeah, that's not a good at any wealth level.
|
| > But even without changing the question, $100M invested
| in a very low risk manner will generate considerable cash
| flow (if you regularly take some profits)
|
| Sure. But individual risk appetites vary and at that
| wealth level you can afford to diversify like crazy - and
| should in my opinion. I'm not sure what that had to do
| with anything.
| pc86 wrote:
| Manipulation and cheating is wrong regardless of the
| amount of money. Tossing the monetary value just aims to
| inflame passions and try to make an emotional appeal.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Please correct me, but here's a provocative hypothesis I spent
| three minutes thinking through. Couldn't you say that
| speculating with insider information _on public markets_ can be
| a way for public officials to make a lot of money without
| marrying themselves to any particular interests? In that case,
| couldn 't it be potentially a mechanism we can exploit for
| good?
|
| Disclaimer: not American, no strong opinion on these people.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Your hypothesis assumes that all elected officials must
| engage in some form of bribery or pay for play. In an ideal
| world we'd find leaders who put the interests of the country
| ahead of their finances.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Or alternatively we can just pay them _a lot_ more since
| they 'll make money anyway, disallow them from earning
| money in other ways and at least have their profits have no
| additional negative effects.
|
| Not that I expect people would be comfortable paying
| politicians more (see how many complain about e.g. CEO pay)
| so I guess we are stuck with incentives for corruption
| instead.
| kennywinker wrote:
| I don't think we need to PAY them more to eliminate
| corruption - I think we need to change how campaigns are
| financed. Needing to raise millions every few years to
| keep your job makes you beholding to whoever has the
| money
| jlarocco wrote:
| I guess I don't see where the "good" is there?
|
| Being a representative isn't supposed to be a "get rich
| quick" scheme. They already make a lot of money and IMO if
| they're going to invest in stocks they should play by the
| same rules as everybody else.
|
| Edit: On second thought, considering how much they can
| influence stock prices, maybe they should have _stricter_
| insider information regulations. It 's a huge conflict of
| interest.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Sure, speculating on insider information on public markets is
| a great way for anyone to make a lot of money. It's also
| highly illegal, although there does seem to be some fairly
| prominent views that allowing insider trading would actually
| help get relevant information priced into the public markets.
|
| But even if you're one of those proponents of insider
| trading, surely this is clearly different and worse than
| that, because prominent politicians surely have some power to
| _influence_ winners and losers.
| stereolambda wrote:
| Well, the laws around insider trading and similar practices
| changed throughout history. Many things used to be
| considered okay, look up Joseph P. Kennedy's biography for
| example.
|
| You are right that if the officials actually cared about
| companies, it would not make sense. I was thinking more
| like hedge fund-like cold speculation. As people guessed
| correctly, the point is to make the job very appealing but
| with little ties to powerful interests. Of course is not a
| serious scheme, but I'm amused by the concept I guess.
| sorbits wrote:
| Personally I think that the conflict of interest posed by
| stock holding lawmakers is bigger than the advantages they
| gain from trading on information that only they are privy to.
|
| For example will a lawmaker holding a large portion of their
| wealth in Apple shares want to introduce legislation that
| forces Apple to allow alternative app stores (costing Apple
| the 15%-30% cut of all the app store sales)?
| adolph wrote:
| In most situations this is called insider trading and is
| considered unfair in public markets since the trades of
| insiders may be concealed, like through a family member.
|
| Within an organization making a decision that advantages
| oneself is unethical since the purpose of the most
| organizations is not to fulfill the personal interests of its
| employees.
|
| It would make some sense to convert all property holdings of
| a government employee to financial instruments related to the
| health of the government such as treasury notes. That way
| their personal interests are at least aligned with those of
| the government. To the degree that the instruments measure
| aspects of the government that are not totally aligned with
| the governed is a problem however.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Re. the Gottheimer trading; if one is to believe the reports of
| his net worth based on public records [1][2], he supposedly
| almost tripled his wealth in just one year. That seems quite
| unusual.
|
| The fact that he appears to trade mostly $MSFT while also being
| a former MSFT Executive and seems to be extremely accurate in
| his options trading of that $MSFT, only really adds to the
| extreme suspiciousness.
|
| Is there no entity that even just tries to keep tabs on or
| possibly investigates these people, let alone charge them with
| crimes where appropriate? It seems that where there is smoke
| ... and fire ... there may actually be fire.
|
| [1] https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/07/the-richest-new-
| jersey-m...
|
| [2] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/richest-member-congress-
| state...
| pvarangot wrote:
| 3x or 5x of your wealth if you correctly time a global crisis
| is not unheard of. Even in boring stuff like real state. With
| options and tech it probably happened last year to a
| substantial amount of people.
| kelnos wrote:
| The SEC should be investigating things like this, and do
| actually bring a lot of enforcement action against various
| companies and individuals, but I suspect it might be a
| career-limiting move to target a politician for all but the
| most gross of abuses.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > Is there no entity that even just tries to keep tabs on or
| possibly investigates these people, let alone charge them
| with crimes where appropriate?
|
| well there's this thing called the IRS that seems to spend
| most of their time auditing random citizens when the numbers
| they submit on their tax forms doesn't match the numbers the
| IRS already calculated on their side. maybe we could
| streamline that absolutely ridiculous process & their efforts
| could be used elsewhere
| pc86 wrote:
| This argument comes up a lot and it's an astounding
| oversimplification and gross misunderstanding of how taxes
| work in the US. The IRS does not know how much you owe
| until you file. They may have a rough approximation, but
| they absolutely don't know anything close enough to be able
| to bill you.
| pbreit wrote:
| There is zero reason for congresspersons to trade options or
| really even any individual stocks. The optics are horrific.
| api wrote:
| The fact that high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats can
| trade stocks at all is criminal. The moral hazard is
| unbelievable.
| skohan wrote:
| Yes it's the definition of conflict of interest. It's insane
| that this is allowed
| sneak wrote:
| I think it's working as intended and that it's insane that
| people are surprised it's set up this way.
|
| The state and large corporate interests in the USA are very
| tightly integrated and have been for at least an entire
| generation.
| skohan wrote:
| But this is so cynical. Not to be naive, but if we can't
| at least start from the framework that the government
| should serve primarily the interests of the people and be
| outraged when it doesn't, then the American project is
| pretty much over
| sneak wrote:
| I'm not sure that has ever been true, or ever been the
| goal.
|
| The American government does serve the interests of the
| American people: the American people who own the bulk of
| the land and the largest companies.
|
| George Washington was the largest landowner in the
| colonies when the revolution started.
| hpkuarg wrote:
| But Washington also shocked the ruling elites of the
| world by stepping down when he did. Clearly, he was cut
| of a different cloth than other largest landowners in
| their respective countries.
| kelnos wrote:
| Right, and in the very beginning, only some single-digit
| percent of the people living in the US were eligible to
| vote. Women, slaves, non-landowners, etc. did not have
| the right to vote.
|
| The idea that the US was originally founded "by the
| people, for the people" is not at all what happened. I
| guess we could say that the government they created was
| progressive for its time, at least.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Right, and in the very beginning, only some single-
| digit percent of the people living in the US were
| eligible to vote. Women, slaves, non-landowners, etc. did
| not have the right to vote.
|
| Slaves would not have been a large proportion of the
| country as a whole--about 20% at their height. While the
| early US did require landownership for adult free males
| to vote, the US also had unusually high landownership
| rates. It's estimated that ~60% of free adult males had
| the right to vote (contemporary Britain had about 15-20%
| of free adult males having that same rate). So ultimately
| you end up with about 25% of the current franchise rate,
| or somewhere in the mid-high teens after taking into
| account the existence of children who still cannot vote.
| formercoder wrote:
| When in the private sector those of us that even get a whiff
| of MNPI are told we can't trade individual names at all.
| nuisance-bear wrote:
| If you work in private equity, it's the worst. Your company
| isn't actively trading stock, but you still get banned from
| options, shorts, and need pre-clearance for every single
| trade. So you end up long SPY... even if you derive
| independent utility from actively managing your portfolio.
|
| The law doesn't require this of course, but basically all
| money managers get their insider trading compliance program
| from the same 3 outside law firms.
| [deleted]
| ABeeSea wrote:
| > Pelosi in Dec 22 was against more stimulus.
|
| This is not true. It's very odd to see the kind of right-wing
| conspiracies based on outright fabrications spread on HN as
| literal truths. Here is an article from December 22 were Pelosi
| is calling for more stimulus:
|
| www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/22/trump-calls-covid-relief-bill-
| unsuitable-and-demands-congress-add-higher-stimulus-
| payments.html
|
| Here is her direct tweet dated 12/22:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/134155753573...
| ?
|
| Edit: There are outright lies in the source article. Sad day
| for HN that the lies are getting so much traction and fact
| checking with 1st hand sources is getting downvoted.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _It's very odd to see the kind of right-wing conspiracies_
|
| It's even more odd to see the, "if you disagree you're alt-
| right/ a Nazi" mentality on HN.
|
| Why does a member of congress need to day-trade stocks, let
| alone leveraged derivatives? It's absurd.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _It 's even more odd to see the, "if you disagree you're
| alt-right/ a Nazi" mentality on HN._
|
| You believing that "right-wing conspiracies" automatically
| means ties to "alt-right/Nazis", I think this says more
| about your personal biases than the person you are
| responding to.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > right-wing conspiracies based on outright fabrications
|
| maybe on that one point, but the fact the democrats trade way
| more on the markets is not a conspiracy _theory_ , it's an
| outright conspiracy.
|
| why are you defending these people? because they're democrats
| on paper?
| allturtles wrote:
| I believe GP is defending facts against malicious lies.
| That seems always a good thing, regardless of whom the lies
| are directed towards.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Yes, exactly. This is the kind of obviously disprovable
| lie that I though wouldn't fly on HN.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| People are confused about this because Pelosi rejected the
| stimulus in October, prior to the election. She didn't accept
| until December, post election.
|
| Some democrats were urging her to accept it in October:
| https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1315078896853843970
| ABeeSea wrote:
| That's not what the business insider linked in the tweet
| says. It says she described the White House plan as
| "insufficient" meaning there wasn't enough stimulus in it.
| How can criticizing a bill for not having enough stimulus
| mean you are against stimulus?
|
| The House had passed the HEROES act for additional stimulus
| in May 2020. The Republican senate refused to even put it
| up for a vote. She was always for passing of the HEROES act
| even during this October - December period. She was always
| pro stimulus.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > the HEROES act
|
| Does anyone else cringe at this American obsession with
| naming acts of congress so as to create "inspirational"
| acronyms?
| sneeze-slayer wrote:
| Yeah, I think it's really weird. Maybe a way to help give
| the bills "spin" and gain support. Honestly, though, I
| think there are bigger things to worry about.
| ianthiel wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? These are references to primary
| sources that directly contradict facts presented.
| bombastry wrote:
| I also thought this was odd. This site alleges malfeasance
| based purely on analysis of data but then alludes to a
| person's thoughts on specific dates without citation.
|
| I also found this article on 2020/12/21 where Pelosi says she
| wanted more stimulus, but the $600 checks were
| significant.[1] So it seems all the more unlikely that she
| said she was against further stimulus at any point on the
| 22nd.
|
| [1] https://news.yahoo.com/nancy-pelosi-wanted-
| more-600-22542493...
| gexla wrote:
| Pelosi is a master politician and the pandemic has been a fast
| moving situation. I could see Pelosi being against the stimulus
| and then fast switching based on changing currents in the minds
| of voters.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Great. Why does she have to buy shares in companies that
| align with her "switching"?
| kgog wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, vast majority of $ traded in Energy and
| Industrials is by GOP, and in tech is by Dems.
|
| Then there's this:
|
| > Meanwhile, Republican Congressman Mark Green, alone, accounts
| for 99% of the stock purchases in oil and gas companies like USA
| Compression and Energy Transfer.
|
| Look this guy up [1]:
|
| > Green rejects the scientific consensus that human activity
| plays a key role in climate change.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_E._Green#Climate_change
| finexplained wrote:
| Members of congress should only be allowed to invest in SPY/VOO,
| VTI, and a few other broad ETFs, long only, no options.
| prussian wrote:
| Honestly, this should be held for any positions where insider
| information is clearly a conflict. Maybe not in specific
| instruments, but investments should be made through a third-
| party money manager.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| My thought was that they (and immediate family) would have to
| put their assets into a blind trust could be disolved upon
| their leaving office. They should have no ability to make
| personal investment decisions while they are in a position of
| such influence and insider knowledge.
| throwastrike wrote:
| Exactly. If you work for a bank, you can't buy certain stocks.
| Some firms will limit you to ETFs and indices. Why can't we
| apply simple private sector rules? Politicians, both republican
| and democrats, are crooks. I don't think you can contest that
| outside perhaps a handful of public servants.
| beervirus wrote:
| That would be a good start. But it's still problematic for them
| to sell positions like that on non-public information like news
| of a new pandemic.
| finexplained wrote:
| I agree, it's a start. But importantly it (attempts to) align
| their interests with the broader US economy. Also it still
| allows them to invest for their personal futures, which I
| believe is a right.
| ralusek wrote:
| Hasn't the last year very clearly demonstrated that the ability
| to lower interest rates and print money has had _far_ more of
| an impact on the market than anything else? Stocks are
| practically moving up and down in unison, the market is almost
| entirely macroeconomics driven when 40% of all USD was created
| in the last 12 months.
|
| If they can invest in total market indices while having the
| ability to control the money supply, even if they can just go
| long, it doesn't matter.
| rsync wrote:
| "... long only ..."
|
| Can we please stop perpetuating the myth that short selling, or
| holding short positions, is some kind of exotic or shady or
| villainous activity ?
|
| It's not. Short selling, and the holding of short positions, is
| value neutral and is part of a healthy properly functioning
| marketplace.
|
| I don't know what politicians should or should not be doing but
| a long vs. short distinction is silly.
| finexplained wrote:
| My apologies, it wasn't my intent to imply that myth. I
| actually completely agree with your position on short
| selling. At the time of writing it just seemed a bit weird to
| me, and possibly an incorrect alignment of interests, for a
| US politician to take a short position in SPY...
| rsync wrote:
| OK, actually that's interesting - if they are restricted to
| SPY (for instance) then it would, indeed, be a bad look if
| they went short ...
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| Sounds like overreaching blanket regulation.
|
| What if we just regulated the 0.01% who's wealth is such that
| it makes the top elected officials in our country have a
| seemingly insignificant compensation.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This is more or less what everyone in the registered investment
| adviser & mutual fund world must do. There's quite a lot of
| compliance software to facilitate approval and checks before
| and after a transaction is effected in a personal account and
| the personal transaction history is compared, broadly, with
| market performance and internal fund transactions periodically
| to check for overlapping trades (+/- a week) in the same
| direction.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I had to follow these ridiculous rules despite the fact that
| I never actually had access to PII and was working as
| programmer at Goldman Sachs (in PWM, no robo trading or
| anything). These rules seem to be in place mostly for
| (relatively) poor people.
| de6u99er wrote:
| What about their friends and families?
| finexplained wrote:
| In the financial industry we have restrictions not only on
| our own trading accounts, but on any account that we might
| have reasonable influence over. In my particular case, this
| means both my brokerage accounts and any of those belonging
| to a spouse. This is a requirement by our compliance
| departments to follow SEC regulations regarding insider
| trading. I don't see why similar rules would not be applied
| in this setting.
| de6u99er wrote:
| Sure, but ultimately it's only a crime if they get caught.
| And even then it seems to me that they can get away with it
| too easily.
|
| How about electing honest people, instead of constantly
| voting for the establishement (w. a few exceptions).
| finexplained wrote:
| I'm obviously for electing honest people.
|
| It's probably (I don't work at the SEC) true that it's
| still difficult to catch all perpetrators. The SEC has
| limited resources and they probably have a way of
| prioritizing cases that they think have sufficient
| evidence. No system is perfect, but from my perspective
| the SEC is a respected organization whose authority is
| treated seriously. I have frequently been told that I
| will face serious jail time if I engage in insider
| trading and am later caught.
| mLuby wrote:
| (If you know a way to reliably detect "honest" people,
| it'll make you enough money to stop caring about all this
| and probably win you a Nobel peace prize too.)
|
| How to detect these crimes? By doing what the article
| describes: analyze the public officials' public
| disclosures and performance to see if "House members are
| outperforming market averages" or "house members followed
| trends far earlier" than the rest of the market. I would
| extend this analysis to family and known associates as
| well; if the politician's neighbor starts making really
| smart trades around the time the politician entered
| office, that's worth investigating.
|
| I wonder about allowing any constituent to bring a suit
| against their politician if they believe they can prove
| insider trading. Judge/grand jury still has to rule
| (publicly!) that it's case-worthy _before_ bothering the
| politician. If the politician loses the case, they 're
| removed from office, must cover all legal fees, and must
| give the ill-gotten gains to the constituent who brought
| the suit as a bounty. If the suit fails, that suing
| constituent has to cover the legal fees.
|
| We could also require (and might already for all I know)
| a written justification at time of each trade, which TV
| suggests is a thing hedge funds have to do, but that's
| basically just a fixed transaction cost since anyone with
| money could hire an "analyst" to write something
| plausible.
|
| Another comment suggested that officials should have to
| announce trades in advance, though that might have the
| effect of banning trades altogether.
|
| Fundamentally, I want my elected officials focused 100%
| on doing their job, not trying to get rich in their spare
| time. So barring them from all trading while in office
| would be fine by me.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Of course if you actually work in financial services industry,
| your personal trading is extremely restricted. This is regardless
| of being in no position to see positions/flow/etc that would give
| you any insider edge.
|
| The industry generally sees it as easier to show compliance by
| having locked down personal trading by employees.
|
| Usually this takes the form of - ETFs only, pre-clearance
| required, 30 day holding periods, limited to using only a list of
| 5 approved brokers.. and sometimes all of the above.
|
| The restrictions apply not just to spouses but to anyone in
| household, and you have to attest you are reporting any holdings
| of say.. your parents, if you still live at home.
|
| So the mother of a live-at-home college grad tech support analyst
| who plugs in phones at a bank has more trading restrictions than
| senior politicians :-)
| Havoc wrote:
| > and sometimes all of the above.
|
| And you need to grant them access to the broker data feed and
| no derivatives.
|
| It's in part why I'm suddenly into crypto.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| lot of them banning crypto or requiring disclosure as well
| paulpauper wrote:
| this is the guy who spams literally all of chamath's tweets and
| everyone else in involved with finance and investing
| asdev wrote:
| This can be solved by having trading of securities on an open
| blockchain. Have insiders/government officials sign time locked
| transactions ahead of time for the entire world to see.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| Until we all start holding these people more accountable, and
| better educating ourselves on the issues, nothing is going to
| change and they know it.
|
| Here is, in particular, what they know: We as a whole despise
| Congress but somehow manage to convince ourselves that, "My
| representative is the only one who is honest!" so we re-elect
| them over and over again.
|
| Here is another thing they know: the number of people I know
| personally who bitch and complain about issues based purely on
| headlines they've read or heard (note, it's ONLY the headlines.
| they can't be bothered to actually read the article) is, for me,
| astounding. In other words; the people don't want to do the work
| of really educating themselves and the politicians take advantage
| of that.
|
| Let me say it again. Until we educate ourselves and demand that
| the people we elect be more accountable to us, the people, then
| they will. not. change.
| vmception wrote:
| I don't have a problem with this.
|
| Did this really harm your confidence in the markets, or did it
| only harm your confidence in politicians who have been doing this
| for hundreds of years whether there was mandatory disclosure or
| not?
|
| Insider trading regulations are based around people feeling
| willing to use the capital markets at all. People use the US
| capital markets, so expanding that regulation is not necessary.
|
| For the latter observation, I would like there to be quicker
| reporting so that we can trade alongside it.
| bluecalm wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind is that maybe stock market is to
| nervous reacting to news. Microsoft isn't worth suddenly 5% more
| or less depending what some politician says on a given day.
|
| I mean insider trading should be illegal especially for real
| insiders. That I am not arguing. The market just seems to easy
| too spook and not that efficient to me.
| hastes wrote:
| Pelosi makes millions during the 'deadliest pandemic in history'
| and no one turns an eye. Problem is this will fade away like
| every single other important topic of these ruling elites, who
| don't give a single f*k about you or me or any social issues.
|
| They are plainly there to shove through their friends interests,
| profit off of insider information, and get out without going to
| jail. Every single one of them.
| ffff0ffffff wrote:
| Pelosi is a FUCKING CUNT! FUCK THAT BITCH!
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