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

Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

bigtechnology.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–169 of 169 posts

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#161

Post by filoleg »

TheDong wrote: post #99
filoleg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am misreading, but I am genuinely confused how small cap stocks are related to the conversation at all. My concern wasn’t regarding small cap ticker traders, but something more like attempting to manipulate the market movements by doing certain bogus trades, as well as tons of others that someone else could have come up with. Basically, I am sensing there might be unwanted side effects from this, but I am not…

Ah, apologies for not explaining more. What I meant was that if a congressperson says "I will buy $100 worth of $SMALLCO in two weeks", that would artificially increase the price of that stock, and the congressperson would get less money / traders would profit slightly by selling shares they got cheaply. This effect is what I thought you were concerned about. Such an effect can only happen if these known trades are a…

I understand what you are saying now better, thanks for clarifying. I still disagree that it would only affect small cap tickers. If it was only small cap tickers like you are saying, I would have been all in favor of your proposal with zero hesitation or second thoughts.

While Apple might be an outlier example, I think that a congress person heavily investing into even significant cap tickers (like Palantir or Ford or Pfizer or etc.) could move the market and turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I am not worried about the investment dollar amount itself being the catalyst (because you are correct, senators don't have the raw amount of money needed to move the tickers by its own virtue), but everything else influenced by it. If everyone saw that some senator is extremely bullish on something like Ford, institutional investors will likely jump onto it as well (and large institutional investors definitely can affect the market with such moves, as they quite often do).

Not even mentioning retail, but I agree that it isn't that important and can be disregarded for the purpose of this conversation. You are right that the retail dollar amounts aren't really high enough to move the ticker on their own for non-small-cap tickers (but it can make the pump from large institutional investors more significant).

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#162

Post by kej »

sethd wrote: post #112
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Hell no. Elected office is a sacrifice and a duty. It is not a way to make a living. Thats how you end up with dinosaurs working those halls for 68 years. I have a better idea. 1)Fix salary at 2x poverty wage. 2) make house members 1:50,000 representation to their county (yes that means the house would explode to 8000 elected officials) 3) tax any earnings above their pre-office historical income avg, at say 98%.…

> make house members 1:50,000 representation to their county (yes that means the house would explode to 8000 elected officials) I disagree with rest, but something along these lines does seem like a good solution.

As a random bit of trivia, the original proposal was for a 1:40,000 representative ratio, and the only opinion George Washington expressed the entire time he chaired the Constitutional Convention was to change the ratio to 1:30,000.

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#163

Post by UIUC_06 »

q1w2 wrote: post #159
UIUC_06 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you're right about the title. The article is not about day trading, which confused me at first too. However, "insider" is often construed broadly as "possessing material, non-public information." For example, if you work at Google and you realize the next earnings are bad and you call your brother-in-law, who sells short, he can be prosecuted for violating insider trading laws. I think. Not just you. No…

Your example is not correct. Insiders in companies are specifically designated people. Top executives and anyone with access to material non-public financial information. Just being an employee does not make you an "insider". I regularly traded in the company I worked for. I did not have access to any financial information, so it was all based on my hunches of how sales were doing. There's nothing illegal about that.…

I didn't say being an employee made you an insider.

However, many (most?) companies nowadays impose blanket trading restrictions for the month before earnings reports. I know Google does, and probably the other FAANGs as well.

In my example, the brother-in-law would get caught and questioned, since the SEC actively watches for trades just before major moves in a stock. He could expect to be asked "why did you short Google?" I would not want to be in his shoes. And the employee could also expect to get asked why he called the BIL. Would the SEC go that far? They certainly could; whether they always do or not, it's "do you feel lucky?"

Do you think we can't dig up examples where this has happened?

In any case, the "blind trust" is the answer to conflicts of interest. Public officials have the ability to affect the fortunes of any private company by the performance of their duties, and that's why they're quite often required to use one.

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#164

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #78
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Hell no. Elected office is a sacrifice and a duty. It is not a way to make a living. Thats how you end up with dinosaurs working those halls for 68 years. I have a better idea. 1)Fix salary at 2x poverty wage. 2) make house members 1:50,000 representation to their county (yes that means the house would explode to 8000 elected officials) 3) tax any earnings above their pre-office historical income avg, at say 98%.…

If you're going to this extreme why not keep the system as is with the only change being that we no longer have elected officials but rather citizens of voting age chosen at random in much the same way a jury is selected to serve for a term? No competitions, no prestige, just a duty that people are randomly asked to do to serve their countries.

That sounds great but what natural random number generator will you use?

You can appreciate that jurt selection mostly works becayse the vast majoritt of events for which you are selecting is truly unimportant and thus with no value.

When you are making a selection that in fact provides well paid jobs, arent you making the selection process a highly sought target for criminals and thieves seeking power?

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#165

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

vineyardmike wrote: post #80
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Hell no. Elected office is a sacrifice and a duty. It is not a way to make a living. Thats how you end up with dinosaurs working those halls for 68 years. I have a better idea. 1)Fix salary at 2x poverty wage. 2) make house members 1:50,000 representation to their county (yes that means the house would explode to 8000 elected officials) 3) tax any earnings above their pre-office historical income avg, at say 98%.…

> If they cant make ends meet with their basic salary, they dont know sacrifice. If they dont know sacrifice shouldn't be running for office. This is how you get bad candidates. > If they dont know sacrifice shouldn't be running for office. The poster might like AOC then. But something tells me they're not a supporter. > Stop paying for busy bodies and start electing hardworking, everyday americans TBH not sure i tru…

What are these complex decisions?

Are politicians hired to debug code?

To send rockets to the moon?

To discover innovative ways to create profit?

No. Politicians only have 1 job. Protect the minority from the mob. To ensure neutral refereeing between consensual adults. Thats it. Its not rocket science.

In fact i venture that the avg rocket scientist would do a far worse job than your avg joe.

Avg joe understands the limits of his intellect and has a healthy respect for the wisdom of crowds.

The avg scientist has gone thru life being told how great they are, and now they think they know better than you and me.

Kissinger, McNamara, Wolfowitz, Fauci et al believe their hubris to be true and have caused major damage with their decisions.

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#166

Post by vineyardmike »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #165
vineyardmike wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they cant make ends meet with their basic salary, they dont know sacrifice. If they dont know sacrifice shouldn't be running for office. This is how you get bad candidates. > If they dont know sacrifice shouldn't be running for office. The poster might like AOC then. But something tells me they're not a supporter. > Stop paying for busy bodies and start electing hardworking, everyday americans TBH not sure i tru…

What are these complex decisions? Are politicians hired to debug code? To send rockets to the moon? To discover innovative ways to create profit? No. Politicians only have 1 job. Protect the minority from the mob. To ensure neutral refereeing between consensual adults. Thats it. Its not rocket science. In fact i venture that the avg rocket scientist would do a far worse job than your avg joe. Avg joe understands the…

There are tough decisions. Laws are long and complex, and can have huge second order affects that need to be thought out.

> Politicians only have 1 job. Protect the minority from the mob.

> has a healthy respect for the wisdom of crowds.

But is a politicians job to listen to the wisdom of the crowds?

> The avg scientist has gone thru life being told how great they are, and now they think they know better than you and me.

I sure trust a scientist more on their area of expertise more than I trust my own knowledge. I think people who rise to the top of their field generally believe their own hubris, not just scientists. Doctors think they can do anything, because becoming a doctor is so hard and well rewarded, engineers think they can solve anything because an engineers job is to solve (a specific subdomain of) things.

Whenever an engineer tells me an issue is simple and they have the answer, if it's not their field, then they don't. This doubly applies to comments on HN, which have already solved economics, politics, and healthcare, just to name a few.

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#167

Post by mohanmcgeek »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #152
MarkSweep wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To give an example, that may not representative: the Texas legislature meets for 140 days, every 2 years. The governor can call special sessions that are up to 30 days in length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Legislature So at least in Texas it does not have to be a full time job.

But neither is it a job that most people could afford not working for that long a time.

For the jobs I mentioned above, it would be very easily possible: Actors, sportsmen and pilots

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#168

Post by Handytinge »

ISL wrote: post #28

Members of Congress make ~$174k/yr. [1] It will be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that we should pay better (and demand better) for a job with that much responsibility. Otherwise, a congressperson will be forever tempted to align their incentives with service to causes other than their electorate. I'm fairly certain we should be paying our elected officials at least as much as our football coaches. [1] https://w…

Is that not a good wage? That's at arouns 5x median/3x average American wage from the numbers I found online and puts them in the top 6% of earners in the country based on a random calculator I found[1].

I accept there's probably some variance here, but even if they're in the top 10% of Americans, is that not sufficient? What percentage do you think they should be in?

[1] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

Re: Congress Needs to Stop Day Trading, Says Sen. Mark Warner

#169

Post by vineyardmike »

csee wrote: post #124
vineyardmike wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree! The legislative capture of bad decisions is far more dangerous than them "stealing" from wallstreet.

I agree with what you said, except the part about stealing from "wall street". Most of that money is stolen from regular people's investments and pension funds.

Not sure i even agree with that.

Most markets are not 0-sum, and taking a "long" position (congresswomen buying low, and selling high) won't cause anyone harm unless they took a short position on the asset - which hopefully most people's regular investments don't do.

Post reply on HN