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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

#121

Post by skohan »

freeone3000 wrote: post #106
yumraj wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#122

Post by bluecalm »

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#123

Post by dlp211 »

partiallypro wrote: post #115
dlp211 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a country with little government that is successful.

Comparatively speaking, most Western countries.

This is a joke right? Based on what measurement do most Western countries have little government?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#124

Post by lordnacho »

koube wrote: post #89
lordnacho wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

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 po…

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#125

Post by sneak »

wpietri wrote: post #100
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 0.00…

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#126

Post by michaelmrose »

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?

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

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#127

Post by jliptzin »

stereolambda wrote: post #113
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…

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 peo…

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#128

Post by smt88 »

wpietri wrote: post #100
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 0.00…

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#129

Post by danans »

Kranar wrote: post #103
munk-a wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 simplify…

> 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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#130

Post by sneak »

YinglingLight wrote: post #114
freeone3000 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

What they said was objectively true, regardless of your opinions for or against the situation.
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