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Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

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Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#61

Post by ghaff »

grog454 wrote: post #43
_lb0d wrote: post #14

My wife works in the audit department of a bank. I'm heavily regulated by the SEC on what stocks, ETFs, mutual funds I can buy/sell. An internal group monitors my buying/selling and makes approval/denial before I can do so. I have to hold an ETF for 1 month before I can sell it--not that I should be swing trading ETFs, but still. It's very frustrating at times, especially when I'm relegated to using just her bank's t…

Why? What kinds of things might you be able to do through your wife that require all this scrutiny?

She would almost certainly have early knowledge of irregularities at her own company but potentially more broadly in the sector because people talk. Trading restrictions don't really cost an employer anything so they often figure that it's easier to get rid of even the possible appearance of impropriety even if it costs some employees/their spouses money.

At the most basic level, I worked for a company that wouldn't let you sell company stock, even as a non-executive, during a window around earnings being reported.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#62

Post by [deleted] »

grog454 wrote: post #43
_lb0d wrote: post #14

My wife works in the audit department of a bank. I'm heavily regulated by the SEC on what stocks, ETFs, mutual funds I can buy/sell. An internal group monitors my buying/selling and makes approval/denial before I can do so. I have to hold an ETF for 1 month before I can sell it--not that I should be swing trading ETFs, but still. It's very frustrating at times, especially when I'm relegated to using just her bank's t…

Why? What kinds of things might you be able to do through your wife that require all this scrutiny?

[deleted]

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#63

Post by ckardat123 »

rwmj wrote: post #44
ckardat123 wrote: post #39

I started building out tools to track congressional stock trading in 2020. Since then, I believe there have been 9 other proposals similar to this one. None of them have been even called to a vote. It seem like Congress is pretty unwilling to regulate its own trading. Until they are, feel free to track the trading here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

Does a "Congress tracker fund" make money? What with all the rumoured insider trading ...

Pretty small out-of-sample window, but we built a trading strategy on top of congressional trading data and it's done well since we launched it last year.

You can see the backtest performance here, but the holdings and advanced metrics are behind a paywall (apologies in advance): https://www.quiverquant.com/strategies/

As others have pointed out, there is a delay between when the trades are made and when they are disclosed and our strategy is able to act on them.

However, this is somewhat countered by the fact that politicians tend to hold stocks for long periods of time.

There are definitely some examples of politicians trading a stock right before a massive market moving event, but I think they are generally looking at a longer time horizon when they are investing.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#64

Post by BurningFrog »

_ea1k wrote: post #4

In practice, how would this work? A requirement that they only use index funds? But then wouldn't that bias them to support the companies that are the major movers in that index? Indexes are often heavily weighted to a small subset after all. TBH, it seems like an idea that sounds good on the surface but has practical issues in implementation that would make it irrelevant

An incentive to make index funds go up is hard to distinguish from an incentive to make the US economy healthy.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#65

Post by dotnet00 »

anonym29 wrote: post #30
bell-cot wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...iterative process... ...When (not if it gets circumvented), that's when... If the politicians manage the process correctly, they can forever be passing "reform bills" which sound good...but have enough loopholes so that nothing resembling actual reform ever happens. Rule of Thumb: If somebody claims they want to build a transportation system, then starts with a square wheel and talks about improving it as the ne…

Inefficient action being taken is still better than absolutely zero action being taken in addressing a problem. Think, for instance, about how many more people might become aware of / interested in the problem, who were previously unaware or uninterested in insider stock trading by members of congress, should a historic bill be passed to initialize the process of stopping the problem.

Inefficient action is not necessarily better than absolutely no action. Inefficient action is a way for politicians to kick the can down the road so they can still use the issue to buy votes.

That's how you get 40+ years of abortion being legal on a technicality, rather than being properly codified into law. It's how you get "student loan forgiveness" instead of any attempt at fixing the student loan racket. It's how you get a NASA where the overall budget is constantly decreasing with the exception of the super expensive rocket no one wants.

Sure, in the moment, these were nice decisions and helped while they lasted, but overall they're simply suppressing actual solutions to focus on feelgood promises.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#66

Post by PartiallyTyped »

BurningFrog wrote: post #47
_lb0d wrote: post #14

My wife works in the audit department of a bank. I'm heavily regulated by the SEC on what stocks, ETFs, mutual funds I can buy/sell. An internal group monitors my buying/selling and makes approval/denial before I can do so. I have to hold an ETF for 1 month before I can sell it--not that I should be swing trading ETFs, but still. It's very frustrating at times, especially when I'm relegated to using just her bank's t…

I can't think of any other situation when one person getting a job puts legal obligations on their spouse, but I haven't looked into it.

My immediate family can't trade Amazon stock even though I am just some random employee in this behemoth.

It's relatively minor, but it's still legal repercussions.

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#67

Post by marktucker »

lesuorac wrote: post #28
ccppurcell wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about they do their jobs, and put off making money in other ways till after their term ends. Maybe they can buy government bonds.

Or perhaps the salary of congress critters /etc should be significantly higher than it is. Is the CEO of Tesla (~50B ?) really more impactful than the US president (~400k/yr) ?

What amount of money do you think you'd have to pay them in order for them to say "Yeah, that's enough. I'm not going to use my position to my advantage."?

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#68

Post by carabiner »

ckardat123 wrote: post #39

I started building out tools to track congressional stock trading in 2020. Since then, I believe there have been 9 other proposals similar to this one. None of them have been even called to a vote. It seem like Congress is pretty unwilling to regulate its own trading. Until they are, feel free to track the trading here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

Also https://www.capitoltrades.com/

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#69

Post by [deleted] »

BurningFrog wrote: post #47
_lb0d wrote: post #14

My wife works in the audit department of a bank. I'm heavily regulated by the SEC on what stocks, ETFs, mutual funds I can buy/sell. An internal group monitors my buying/selling and makes approval/denial before I can do so. I have to hold an ETF for 1 month before I can sell it--not that I should be swing trading ETFs, but still. It's very frustrating at times, especially when I'm relegated to using just her bank's t…

I can't think of any other situation when one person getting a job puts legal obligations on their spouse, but I haven't looked into it.

[deleted]

Re: Senators to Propose Ban on U.S. Lawmakers, Executive Branch Members Owning Stock

#70

Post by aketchum »

rwmj wrote: post #44
ckardat123 wrote: post #39

I started building out tools to track congressional stock trading in 2020. Since then, I believe there have been 9 other proposals similar to this one. None of them have been even called to a vote. It seem like Congress is pretty unwilling to regulate its own trading. Until they are, feel free to track the trading here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/

Does a "Congress tracker fund" make money? What with all the rumoured insider trading ...

I think there is a delay on stock disclosures, like they only have to disclose purchase/sale once a quarter or something which makes it hard to profitably copy their trading.
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