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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

#381

Post by slashdev »

burkaman wrote: post #286
eloff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, childre…

You seem to have a fundamental misapprehension of capitalism.

If you invest your capital, it's not being hoarded in a money bank like Scrooge McDuck. It's being put to use by the companies and institutions you invest in to provide products and services.

Now I'm all for donating to charity, and it's a much better option than leaving massive wealth to your offspring, in my opinion.

But investing your money is totally rational at any wealth level and it's good for society, and necessary for capitalism to function.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#382

Post by eloff »

akudha wrote: post #282
eloff wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not advocating for insider investing - which may well be going on here. That's obviously not ethical.

I made a much more general statement in my comment, which you seemingly objected to.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#383

Post by pc86 »

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.

Does Nancy Pelosi have influence over Tesla?

Even if you take a pretty hard-line attitude about members of Congress being prohibited from doing things like trading their own portfolios, it's hard to make a cogent argument that Paul Pelosi, who is by all measures a private citizen, should be restricted from trading specific stocks.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#384

Post by SavantIdiot »

jimbob45 wrote: post #364
SavantIdiot wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot. As long as there are rigged markets and cadres of elites, we can truly do nothing. Sad, really. Not helping the matter is half of the US is below average intelligence and will elect crooks because they say the right things. If only there were more Ron Wydens and AOCs. But you see red states electing nutjobs who barely have high school degrees (Boeber) because they shout the loudest.

Wyden and AOC enjoy the luxury of not having to worry about re-election due to residing on extremely blue states. They would not be so bold if they represented Texas or Florida, for example. The same goes for Republican representatives in highly red states.

Ah ah, but that is completely circular logic.

AOC would not represent Texas or Florida because they are not progressive enough to support her in a landslide, twice, the way her district did.

Manchin mealy-mouthed his way into a slight win and has to be a slimy politician with no backbone because he craves power.

The funniest part of your post is that you claim AOC "would not be bold." Do you even know who she is? She's the definition of bold. She is doing what she said she would do and pissing off centrist dems all over the place every day.

But call me when AOC & Wyden are involved in a scandal, which is what this entire thread is about. If so, I'll change my tune, but until then, my original point stands.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#385

Post by Swenrekcah »

jb775 wrote: post #369
Swenrekcah wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “orange man” was bad. This is getting tired. If you are interested in his cronies’ self dealings just look it up. They did all of these things and more but also did them more explicitly. Which is a bit more honest in a way I guess? But the worst part about 2017-2020 was the way he cozied up to enemies of democracy, undermined democracy himself and made a point of sowing and igniting division. Back to the article,…

> just look it up. They did all of these things and more Can you provide a single example with a source that proves this? And please provide an example of how he "undermined democracy". Sounds like you watch a lot of CNN. I agree it should be punished equally not depending on D or R.

Sure, here’s one for the former (link below) and for the second you might remember the refusal to accept the election results and months of egging his supporters on, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol and the deaths of 4 or more people.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/10/us/trump-prop...

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#386

Post by pc86 »

adamrezich wrote: post #237
frankfrankfrank wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. the Gottheimer trading; if one is to believe the reports of his net worth based on public records [1][2], he supposedly almost tripled his wealth in just one year. That seems quite unusual. The fact that he appears to trade mostly $MSFT while also being a former MSFT Executive and seems to be extremely accurate in his options trading of that $MSFT, only really adds to the extreme suspiciousness. Is there no entit…

> Is there no entity that even just tries to keep tabs on or possibly investigates these people, let alone charge them with crimes where appropriate? well there's this thing called the IRS that seems to spend most of their time auditing random citizens when the numbers they submit on their tax forms doesn't match the numbers the IRS already calculated on their side. maybe we could streamline that absolutely ridiculou…

This argument comes up a lot and it's an astounding oversimplification and gross misunderstanding of how taxes work in the US. The IRS does not know how much you owe until you file. They may have a rough approximation, but they absolutely don't know anything close enough to be able to bill you.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#387

Post by pvarangot »

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #208
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…

Re. the Gottheimer trading; if one is to believe the reports of his net worth based on public records [1][2], he supposedly almost tripled his wealth in just one year. That seems quite unusual. The fact that he appears to trade mostly $MSFT while also being a former MSFT Executive and seems to be extremely accurate in his options trading of that $MSFT, only really adds to the extreme suspiciousness. Is there no entit…

3x or 5x of your wealth if you correctly time a global crisis is not unheard of. Even in boring stuff like real state. With options and tech it probably happened last year to a substantial amount of people.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#388

Post by michaelmrose »

socialist_coder wrote: post #355
michaelmrose wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The income for a US senator or congressman is already literally exactly at the 95th percentile at 174,000. Making someone wealthy doesn't remove their incentive to gather more wealth it gives them a stake and incentive to be more effectively corrupt.

175k is not enough... it needs to be 300k at least. maybe 500k. Something high enough that the risk-reward for corruption is less attractive. 175k is a nice life but not even remotely enough to have the lifestyle you'd expect for someone running our country.

It is the nature of ambition not to be satiated. people making millions of dollars per year want to make billions. Billionaires strive to exceed their peers. Our leaders already have a lot to lose. Predictably most of our corruption isn't high risk blatant illegality its the boringly legal influence peddling where regular donations buy your "totally legitimate" interests and concerns additional consideration by decision makers instead of paying n dollars for a particular law.

There is no reason to believe paying them 2-3x as much so they can be really wealthy would lead to electing better leaders.

Our lawmakers make 175k directly in salary and aprox 1 million dollars for staff and 143k for office expenses. This is not including the cost of the lifetime pension they will qualify after only 5 years and lifetime health plan for themselves and spouse after 10 years in the house or 8 in the senate. Hint I know they pay I think 28% of the cost of their gold plan.

Lifetime a 2 term senator will cost the tax payers near 18 million dollars in total.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#389

Post by mLuby »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #316
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?

You cannot. As long as there are rigged markets and cadres of elites, we can truly do nothing. Sad, really. Not helping the matter is half of the US is below average intelligence and will elect crooks because they say the right things. If only there were more Ron Wydens and AOCs. But you see red states electing nutjobs who barely have high school degrees (Boeber) because they shout the loudest.

> half of the US is below average intelligence

That is what average means.

(Looks like we two are keeping it balanced!)

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#390

Post by pc86 »

akudha wrote: post #282
eloff wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This took a left turn when someone started just complaining that people have a lot of money.
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