A returns leaderboard on this would be so awesome.
Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#22So, apparently, on average senators do not beat the market as would be expected if this was rampant. So maybe they're not using insider information too much. Either that or, even given their privileged information, they still cannot turn that information into good trades. I imagine it's more of the latter than the former. Stocks rarely follow rationality in the short term. A study that talks more in depth about this…
They know they are being watched. If they have information that would lead to good trades they can hardly use it themself. But certainly they can give it to "friends". That may not directly make them rich but can significantly improve donations if you know what I mean and politician donations are often way more than a salary.
If you make all your friends rich you either will be rich too or you have terrible friends.
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#23I really wish I could look up my representative and see their trades. Now, I understand that this might require a lot more data than you have access to. But, to be honest, that was the first thing I was going to do.
Agree, the title "See the stock trades your representative is making" led me to believe I could select my representative and see what they are trading. There doesnt appear to be an obvious way to search or filter by representative.
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#24Ha! Interesting the different dialect chosen between posting this on WSB and here!
Either way, great work. I saw your post earlier today (?) on WSB and was impressed then and I’m impressed now.
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#25Very cool. I looked into this myself a couple years ago and the fact that the transaction data was in PDFs and that across years and representatives the format of the PDFs was all over the place, I gave up. Great to see someone else took it more seriously than I did and put the work in
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#26You really need to also look at family members, (spouse, children, etc). Many times these trades are through their spouses, as well.
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#27OT: I'd be fine with a law that made Senators and Representatives count as a 10% shareholder for any public company whose stock they own and so subjecting them to rule 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
That rule, which applies to officers, directors, and 10% shareholders of public companies, makes it so that any "short swing" profits from trades have to be given to the company. A "short swing" profit is profit from buying and selling shares of the company, or from selling and buying shares of the company, if the buying and the selling is less than six months apart.
The idea is that officers, directors, and big shareholders should be thinking about the long term good of the company rather than concentrating on short term swings in stock value that they might immediately personally profit from.
16(b) enforcement is brilliant. The people it applies to are the same people that are required to publicly disclose trades, and if you violate it any other shareholder has standing to sue to require you to give the profits to the company. Furthermore, to get that standing they only have to be a shareholder when they file suit, not when the violation occurred. Finally, if they win not only do you have to disgorge your short swing profits, you have to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees.
And so the SEC doesn't have to lift a finger to enforce it. There are attorneys who get the public disclosure data and look for violations, then buy a share of stock in the company and sue.
Even worse from the violator's point of view: if there is more than one purchase or sale of stock in a six month period, they just match up the highest sale price with the lowest purchase, then the second highest sale price with the second lowest, and so on, regardless of order.
For example, if you bought at 100, a month later sold at 90, a month later bought at 80, and a month later sold at 70, you have in reality lost 20. But you've got a 10 short swing profit from that buy at 80, sell at 90, which is all 16(b) cares about.
Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#28So, apparently, on average senators do not beat the market as would be expected if this was rampant. So maybe they're not using insider information too much. Either that or, even given their privileged information, they still cannot turn that information into good trades. I imagine it's more of the latter than the former. Stocks rarely follow rationality in the short term. A study that talks more in depth about this…
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Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#29So, apparently, on average senators do not beat the market as would be expected if this was rampant. So maybe they're not using insider information too much. Either that or, even given their privileged information, they still cannot turn that information into good trades. I imagine it's more of the latter than the former. Stocks rarely follow rationality in the short term. A study that talks more in depth about this…
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Re: Show HN: See the stock trades your representative is making
#30So, apparently, on average senators do not beat the market as would be expected if this was rampant. So maybe they're not using insider information too much. Either that or, even given their privileged information, they still cannot turn that information into good trades. I imagine it's more of the latter than the former. Stocks rarely follow rationality in the short term. A study that talks more in depth about this…
Whoa, the press release does not match the results. Scroll down to Tables 2a,2b on pp. 26-27 of the NBER paper.
These are their 1 year horizon alpha's and tstats against Fama French 3 factor:
alpha tstat
Long 6.5% 6.6
Shrt 5.0% 3.7