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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

#281

Post by skohan »

blunte wrote: post #260
skohan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#282

Post by akudha »

eloff wrote: post #269
gowld wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"normal and rational" is different from "ethical or moral". "All wealth levels" are not the same.

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.

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?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#283

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

mustafa_pasi wrote: post #171
sethammons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Maybe it helped for a while?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#284

Post by vageli »

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #275
infinite8s wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congress excluded itself from insider-trading laws. Convenient, eh?

Can anyone cite a source for this? I don't doubt the legitimacy, but would like to know more about it.

It doesn't seem to be true any longer with the STOCK act.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#285

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

dlp211 wrote: post #123
partiallypro wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparatively speaking, most Western countries.

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

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#286

Post by burkaman »

eloff wrote: post #229
akudha wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#288

Post by rsync »

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.

"... 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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#289

Post by mattferderer »

itsoktocry wrote: post #210
mattferderer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lit…

> 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.

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#290

Post by toss1 »

psychlops wrote: post #151
wpietri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

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