Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

unusualwhales.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 493 posts

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#91

Post by giantg2 »

fighterpilot wrote: post #81
giantg2 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, it's insider trading and should be restricted/prosecuted as such.

There will almost always be plausible deniability. Needs to be banned.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#93

Post by nickthemagicman »

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?

It's impossible.

Who watches the watchmen?

And Democratic party believes that bigger gov't is the solution to many of our problems.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#94

Post by seph-reed »

ek750 wrote: post #72
seph-reed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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)

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#95

Post by skohan »

api wrote: post #84
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…

The fact that high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats can trade stocks at all is criminal. The moral hazard is unbelievable.

Yes it's the definition of conflict of interest. It's insane that this is allowed

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#96

Post by throwawayboise »

finexplained wrote: post #17

Members of congress should only be allowed to invest in SPY/VOO, VTI, and a few other broad ETFs, long only, no options.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#97

Post by formercoder »

api wrote: post #84
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…

The fact that high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats can trade stocks at all is criminal. The moral hazard is unbelievable.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#100

Post by wpietri »

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…

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.

Post reply on HN