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Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

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Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#61

Post by bcrosby95 »

abfan1127 wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#62

Post by floatingatoll »

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,

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#63

Post by mattnewton »

BrianOnHN wrote: post #50

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.

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?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#64

Post by seph-reed »

mabbo wrote: post #9

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?

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#65

Post by c22 »

abfan1127 wrote: post #35
jrockway wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#66

Post by chris11 »

gadders wrote: post #27
sakopov wrote: post #15

> 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…

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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#67

Post by sethammons »

mabbo wrote: post #9

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?

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#68

Post by giantg2 »

christiansakai wrote: post #47

Meanwhile ordinary people still believe that the war is against their fellow people, in identity politics, religion, sexual orientation etc. Devide et Impera.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#70

Post by anonymouswacker »

mabbo wrote: post #9

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?

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.
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