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Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

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Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#111

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #47
sp332 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing "@dang" does not actually do anything. Write to the mods using the Contact email at the bottom of the page.

Sure it does. It allows dang to search posts for his name without getting results that conflict with the actual word dang. Plus it's pretty common usage in places and your eye is drawn to that allowing you to recognize it's a name and not just a word. Pretty useful where people use handles and not actual names. I mean yeah, HN isn't a "smart" website, but I wouldn't say the @ doesn't do anything

[deleted]

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#113

Post by davidgay »

SoftTalker wrote: post #107
OJFord wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the 'other investing approach' is a broad market index like the S&P 500, where is the 'appearance if insider trading'? GP's point is that they could be almost entirely in the S&P500, with some minor innocuous deviation (tracking error, frankly!) and it would look the same. So this isn't really suspicious at all. Sure it's a US-focussed index, but isn't that you want from your politicians? (Outsider perspective her…

If you’re holding elected office or have other regulatory/lawmaking powers you should only be permitted to hold index funds, or preferably you should have to move all your investments into a blind trust. Then there’s little chance you’re benefiting personally from inside info

Down this path is the requirement that politicians be independently wealthy, so that we can require them to earn no money and take no money-related actions, as those all risk corruption.

Is that really what you want?

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#114

Post by jcranmer »

adnmcq999 wrote: post #88
toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

House: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/FinancialDisclosure Senate: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ Background: https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-congress-hides-stock-ho...

Does the following thing they make you acknowledge mean you can’t use this to pick stocks? “It is unlawful to use the information contained in these Financial Disclosure Statements for (A) any unlawful purpose, (B) any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public, (C) determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual, or (D) use, directly or ind…

It definitely doesn't fall under (C) and (D). I'd have to stare harder at insider trading laws, but probably doesn't fall under (A) either. (B) might prohibit you from building an index fund based on it, but I think you should be able to do the stock picking yourself.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#115

Post by Rebelgecko »

signatureMove wrote: post #104
Rebelgecko wrote: post #31

It's hard to find a calculator/data source that takes dividends into account, but it looks like if you bought an S&P500 index fund in May 2022 you'd be up around 18% depending on which day you purchased. So not very dramatic IMO

2% advantage is huge.

2% is huge if it's consistent and replicable thru both good and bad market conditions. Idk if you can say that's the case based off of this data. If you tried a dozen different strategies, I bet a few of them could outperform the market for at least 18 months.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#116

Post by _ea1k »

kbenson wrote: post #52
dmckeon wrote: post #21

Radical proposal: Rather than trying to police leakage of insider information, level the playing field for both politicians and fed employees by creating a dozen or so national mutual funds of at least 1,000 equity positions each that intend to model the US economy as a whole. Anyone can invest in them, but all US Federal employees and immediate family members are required to liquidate all other positions and hold on…

Wouldn't that just incentive those people to always favor the items in that fund, therefore providing an advantage to anything that makes in on the fund? Given two competitors in a market, what if the existing but inefficient one is in the fund but the new one that is trying to shake thing up and/or do a better job is not? You might see a lot more protectionism, and not just against companies of other nations, but ag…

Yeah, I've always been a little sceptical of plans to limit their holdings. I think in some ways they actually worsen the incentives.

If you were limited to GM and Ford, would you want a Tesla or Rivian to exist? If you were limited to K-Mart, would you want Wal-Mart to exist? If you limited to Sears, would you want Lowes, Home Depot, and Best Buy to exist?

Basically any restriction that can be imagined would incentive various other bad behaviors that might actively be anticompetitive.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#117

Post by kasey_junk »

defrost wrote: post #94
despideme wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata to follow. Does this not look suspicious? https://www.threads.net/@quiverquantitative/post/CzcB_jyA_pD The politician in question is a 69 year old former football coach who bought stock in a cloud-based e-commerce software vendor before the company was acquired, then when the stock spiked 50%, he sold it right away.

Well, if you factor in that he bought his position of > $600K US in multiple buys less than a month before the spike then yes, you might say it was a little suspicious. What a lucky man.

Turns out US insider trading laws have nothing to do with fairness (even if you aren’t a congressperson).

They have to do with theft. Me trading against you from an information advantage is encouraged! This isn’t an insider trading issue, it’s an ethics issue.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#118

Post by tacitusarc »

davidgay wrote: post #113
SoftTalker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re holding elected office or have other regulatory/lawmaking powers you should only be permitted to hold index funds, or preferably you should have to move all your investments into a blind trust. Then there’s little chance you’re benefiting personally from inside info

Down this path is the requirement that politicians be independently wealthy, so that we can require them to earn no money and take no money-related actions, as those all risk corruption. Is that really what you want?

I actually don’t see how this follows

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#119

Post by thayne »

davidgay wrote: post #113
SoftTalker wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re holding elected office or have other regulatory/lawmaking powers you should only be permitted to hold index funds, or preferably you should have to move all your investments into a blind trust. Then there’s little chance you’re benefiting personally from inside info

Down this path is the requirement that politicians be independently wealthy, so that we can require them to earn no money and take no money-related actions, as those all risk corruption. Is that really what you want?

I kind of think that lawmakers should have to live off of the median income of the area people governed, so that in order to improve their own finances, they have to improve the situation for everyone.
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