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TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

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Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers consistently year over year. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi

Yeah, but take the random trades of 435 people and a normal distribution is still going to have a top (and bottom!) outlier. It's certainly reasonable to assume an investment manager (her husband, who is making most of the trades) might be part of the reason to be such an outlier. And even discounting that and looking for shenanigans, well..."she timed buying NFLX almost perfectly" with a purchase a month before it w…

how about people in these positions shouldn't be trading... if i was in power i would think people would assume i am corrupt if i did trade.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#132
post #104

Front-running is nothing new, this is simply a game of follow-the-leader where copying a group's investment strategy is done until larger players learn to frontrun or adversarially trade against the aforementioned frontrunners entering in. For example, a scanner may pick up an SEC filing published at 4:01 PM saying that the CEO, CFO, and CIO all purchased shares in their company, and traders would buy shares aftermar…

If you want to label it, it's more 'pump and dump' than front-running isn't it? I understand the latter to be broker (or whoever) trading with knowledge of, ahead of in time, in front of, other orders? I.e. exactly the opposite of 'follow-the-leader'

In practice, they want to be the first people to experience the price movement on newly public information, so you're right it wouldn't be front-running, my (incorrect) interpretation was that they would 'get in front of the trade made by C*O of fictional company before anyone else notices'. It's also not considered tailgating since they have no financial relationship with any of the executives, and acting on these fully disclosed positions would be completely legal.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#133
post #29

Sadly the gap between trades and reporting may eliminate the gain from this otherwise smart strategy.

Politicians, even with insider knowledge seem to be wrong pretty often too though. So I'm not sure it's necessarily a smart move. Look at Rand Paul's purchase of Gilead, the makers of Remdesivir (anti-viral used to treat covid) all the way back in early Feb 2020. Despite purchasing it based on his early briefings for covid on the health and human services committee, before a pandemic was declared and only 1 day befor…

Pelosi or her husband bought a bunch of Tesla call options when TSLA was at $900 or so. Those are way underwater.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#134
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh, Nancy Pelosi beats most hedge fund managers consistently year over year. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/pelosi

* Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Not saying she didn't give him info, but she didn't do the actual trades. He's an investment manager. > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi...

> Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week.

Doesn't every diversified fund in the world own "mega-cap tech stocks"? And most probably bought during May and June because their increased value meant they took a larger proportion of indexes, and index-following is a pretty widely used strategy.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#135

https://www.cnbc.com/id/218.html This reminds me of a study which showed that even if you bought the same stocks a month after Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway disclosed their own purchases, you'd still be way ahead of the game. "The market ... appears to under-react to the news of a Berkshire stock investment since a hypothetical portfolio that mimics Berkshire's investments created the month after…

There's a community on Reddit that studies Berkshire's purchases (investments made by Buffett/Weschler/Combs) and tries to follow, purchasing only below what Berkshire paid: https://old.reddit.com/r/brkb/ For example, in 2020 and early 2021 Berkshire paid $59 for Verizon, buying $9 billion worth (a huge Buffett/Weschler telecom investment). Verizon now trades at about $54, so this community is buying.

Username checks out.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t this bias towards the “losers”?

Short-term stock price changes are noise. Berkshire's investments are based on a deep understanding of the business and are intended to produce good long-term results. Factors like economic moat, trends in consumption, conservative valuation, etc. For example, Berkshire purchased Apple (AAPL) between 2016 and 2018, at an average price of $35 per share (P/E ratio of 12 or 13), and it was years before that paid off. Th…

Berkshire doesn't have to be right about every stock pick as long as the average is good. But if you buy 100% of the Berkshire picks that go down and less than 100% of the picks that go up (because some never drop below the level they bought them for), there is a real risk that you could do substantially worse

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#138
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Not saying she didn't give him info, but she didn't do the actual trades. He's an investment manager. > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi...

He has magical superpowers and just happens to be the husband of a policy maker that drives trillions in government spending.

Maybe. Or maybe by nature of his relationship he gets approached more for interesting opportunities?

Is Dr Dre an amazing talent scout, or was he out and about and by nature of his own fame approached by artists such that he could pick the obvious good opportunitie? Or maybe both apply?

Perhaps having money, power or fame is an attractor of opportunities all on its own.

It doesn't have to be that, but "better than average consistently" doesn't mean much to me when the person is already not average in a few other aspects.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#139
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul Not saying she didn't give him info, but she didn't do the actual trades. He's an investment manager. > Paul Pelosi, investment manager and the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, purchased up to $11 million worth of mega-cap tech stocks in May and June, according to a financial disclosure form filed last week. https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/nancy-pelosi...

He has magical superpowers and just happens to be the husband of a policy maker that drives trillions in government spending.

Paul Pelosi helped launch his wife's political career.

Not the other way around.

Just look at timelines of careers. Paul was already very successful before her career, not since.

Nancy could do unpaid work in the Democratic party because of Paul's success ( 70-80's), which helped her career a lot.

Re: TikTokers Are Trading Stocks by Copying What Members of Congress Do

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but take the random trades of 435 people and a normal distribution is still going to have a top (and bottom!) outlier. It's certainly reasonable to assume an investment manager (her husband, who is making most of the trades) might be part of the reason to be such an outlier. And even discounting that and looking for shenanigans, well..."she timed buying NFLX almost perfectly" with a purchase a month before it w…

how about people in these positions shouldn't be trading... if i was in power i would think people would assume i am corrupt if i did trade.

I mean, I'd be all for politicians having to put any investment money into blind trusts, sure. But that's different than saying they're insider trading.
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