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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

#311

Post by disgrunt »

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…

Here's a recent Pelosi options trade with the Microsoft AR contract announcement. [0]

[0]: https://www.thestreet.com/mishtalk/economics/nancy-pelosis-h...

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#312

Post by rocqua »

mikepurvis wrote: post #261
somethoughts wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - in addition - just have documentation sites like unusual whales which track the trades, holdings and profits of politicians - create infographics prior to every election and distribute them to existing voter information/polling prediction sites like real clear politics. Politicians already long on certain stocks can also profit from legislation that they are passing. Being privy to insider info which leads to c…

I would love to believe that would make a difference, but in a hyperpartisan world where many vote based on a handful of ideological allegiances, how many would seriously be moved to change sides over something as small as a little corruption? Or is this something that would be more at the primary level, where it really is more about personality and personal qualities than party? In any case, the Trump movement's who…

There are still voters on the fence / differences in voter turn-out that mean politicians worry about scandal. The main effect is that these politicians will probably be replaced by different ones from the same party. Moreover, other politicians, hoping not to be replaced, might stop doing blatant insider trading.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#313

Post by cassepipe »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #70
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?

Since the media and intelligence agencies are great at vilifying any dissent (see "Capitol Riot" and how difficult it is for them to even get representation), there is no hope. The US is not going to get better as corruption is rampant and most are in the dark or powerless. Politicians like Bernie Sanders give hope, but they are few and far between, and muzzled. Perhaps the migration away from centralized news source…

Well the Capitol riots were not just any dissent. They were the gathering of a mob of people with crazy conspiracy theories (that very probably would not even agree with each other) as part of mediatic stunt (just not "the media") to give legitimacy to the claim the election had been stolen so the Republican party could suck up more money from its base for "the cause". I have myself much respect for Bernie Sanders and people fighting for more democracy and more equality please, please don't put them in the same bag than people being manipulated into giving time and money for imaginary causes.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#314

Post by burkaman »

philsnow wrote: post #296
burkaman wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> At this level of wealth, just making more money has no positive impact on anybody, even yourself. except that having capital makes it easier to gain more capital, so you could very well end up with more impact by aggressively investing for a few years before donating.

Ok, say you invest that $10 million and a year later it's grown to $12 million. That's a decent return, but what was the opportunity cost of investing in Microsoft instead of, I don't know, funding 100 people on GoFundMe who are going to die if they can't afford surgery? The US government uses ~$10 million as the value of a human life when they analyze the cost/benefit of various policies. And it's a compounding investment - a dead person contributes nothing to society, but a living one might contribute quite a bit. That's just one example though, you could make an argument for any number of worthwhile uses for that money. Even something like venture capital or political organizing, which aren't exactly selfless philanthropic endeavors.

And again, I'm talking about 10% of what's in the bank. You could donate $10 million, invest $60 million, and still have an absurd amount left to buy a few houses or whatever you want for yourself. All while risking nothing, if you hold onto $10 million or so to secure your future.

My argument is that there's some threshold after which you have enough money to support yourself, and to invest to maintain your way of life, and to do something purposeful with the rest. And I think that threshold is below $100 million. I agree that it takes money to make money, but as you say, after "a few years" of investing, you do something with it. When does that happen? Do you need to hit a billion first?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#315

Post by kelnos »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #191
nitrogen wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We only need to find 0.00013% of the US population Maybe we should use sortition then instead of elections? What could be more democratic than random average people (meeting some criteria) taking a turn at the wheel?

A significant percentage of random average people have no practical understanding of economics, and no ability to think of consequences to policy. Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the currently serving congress if current policy is anything to go by.

> Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the currently serving congress if current policy is anything to go by.

I think they understand just fine, most of the time, but are more interested in enriching themselves and their cronies than looking out for their constituents or the health of the system as a whole.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#316

Post by SavantIdiot »

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.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#317

Post by seph-reed »

cubano wrote: post #182
seph-reed wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what liquid democracy is? It's a form of representative democracy, so it should be able to avoid the issues of oligarchy (being centralized and easy to corrupt) as well as the issues of full democracy (where every idiot has a say worth any experts)

Why would you believe that both the individual voters and their delegates wouldn't be susceptible to almost all the same corrupting and manipulative factors that plague voting systems today? The OP is correct...spending in mass media on the various issues would almost surely allow the purchasing of voter mindshare just exactly as advertising today drives sales of almost identical branded products for inflated prices.…

Corruption is still possible, but the real trick to liquid democracy is that every stage is a form of escalation with the potential for correction.

Let's take two scenarios:

1. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an extremist channel, it'll likely get locked in and come out even more extreme than it started. extremists tend to look up to people who are even more extreme. when this happens, there's a good chance the person who's vote it originally was will be upset with where it ends up

2. a vote is being passed "up" and crosses an intellectual/thoughtful person, it'll likely get locked into the academic/altruist channel and come out with an extreme subject expert. this is the ideal outcome.

Basically, at any point where the vote is being passed up it can hit one of these channels and get locked in. There's massive (and immediate) drawbacks to letting your vote hit an extremist, and massive gains to passing to someone who's more intelligent and thoughtful.

While you're totally right about peoples first vote being super manipulable, each successive pass off has an opportunity for escaping that mind control. And once it does, it'll stay out.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#318

Post by rocqua »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #239
slowmovintarget wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant percentage of random average people have no practical understanding of economics, and no ability to think of consequences to policy. Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the currently serving congress if current policy is anything to go by.

What about both? Take the existing system and have the house and Senate argue every official act to the sortition for a vote. How would this be worse than the current crony capitalism we suffer under?

Perhaps have a third stage (after the senate) that is the sortition that has to approve a bill.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#319

Post by rocqua »

frankfrankfrank wrote: post #236
slowmovintarget wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant percentage of random average people have no practical understanding of economics, and no ability to think of consequences to policy. Granted, neither do a significant percentage of the currently serving congress if current policy is anything to go by.

Regardless of whether one may like the initial selection criteria or not, what you describe is precisely why the country (USA) was supposed to be led by land owning free white men. The assumption being that people that fit that criteria, plausibly possessed a requisite initial selection criteria set of skills and knowledge that would constitute the pool of best qualified people to run a government in the common inter…

> Regardless of whether one may like the initial selection criteria or not, what you describe is precisely why the country (USA) was supposed to be led by land owning free white men.

> I realize that just saying that may cause some consternation among some, but it is objectively the best selection system one could possibly devise

Combining these two statements suggests that you would advocate for white supremacy. Is that a correct deduction of mine? I would rather ask than just jump to conclusions.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#320

Post by kelnos »

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…

The SEC should be investigating things like this, and do actually bring a lot of enforcement action against various companies and individuals, but I suspect it might be a career-limiting move to target a politician for all but the most gross of abuses.
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