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Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

unusualwhales.com

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Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#331

Post by ed_balls »

psychlops wrote: post #151
wpietri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the behind-the-scenes truth, I think the appearance of conflicting interests is a problem regardless. For a lot of elected offices and high public service positions, I think their wealth should be put into a blind trust, one constrained by law to buy broad, boring things like index funds. That would surely be a problem for some individuals. But I don't think it's a systemic problem. We only need to find 0.00…

Just require them to announce their trades publicly 24 hours in advance. And let them manage their own finances. All these shenanigan's would disappear.

Their children or other family would do the deals.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#332

Post by unethical_ban »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #325
wpietri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the behind-the-scenes truth, I think the appearance of conflicting interests is a problem regardless. For a lot of elected offices and high public service positions, I think their wealth should be put into a blind trust, one constrained by law to buy broad, boring things like index funds. That would surely be a problem for some individuals. But I don't think it's a systemic problem. We only need to find 0.00…

If you took away the politicians way of getting rich then what motivation would people have to be politicians? /s

I'm thinking of running for city council because I actually give a shit about civil service, the importance of good government, and I think I'm a better option than some of the absolute nutcases even running for mayor in my city.

Some people actually care.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#333

Post by kelnos »

sneak wrote: post #174
skohan wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is so cynical. Not to be naive, but if we can't at least start from the framework that the government should serve primarily the interests of the people and be outraged when it doesn't, then the American project is pretty much over

I'm not sure that has ever been true, or ever been the goal. The American government does serve the interests of the American people: the American people who own the bulk of the land and the largest companies. George Washington was the largest landowner in the colonies when the revolution started.

Right, and in the very beginning, only some single-digit percent of the people living in the US were eligible to vote. Women, slaves, non-landowners, etc. did not have the right to vote.

The idea that the US was originally founded "by the people, for the people" is not at all what happened. I guess we could say that the government they created was progressive for its time, at least.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#334

Post by throwastrike »

finexplained wrote: post #17

Members of congress should only be allowed to invest in SPY/VOO, VTI, and a few other broad ETFs, long only, no options.

Exactly. If you work for a bank, you can’t buy certain stocks. Some firms will limit you to ETFs and indices. Why can’t we apply simple private sector rules? Politicians, both republican and democrats, are crooks. I don’t think you can contest that outside perhaps a handful of public servants.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#335

Post by psychlops »

icedchai wrote: post #294
cameronh90 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also as a regular fintech worker, I have to get internal approval from my employer for anything I do. Why can government representatives trade willy nilly without any oversight?

Do you actually "have to"? How would they know if you don't? Basically, is it an honor system?

20 years ago it used to be the honor system. Now all the records are connected, many make it a requirement of employment to move all accounts into the firm.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#336

Post by jwilber »

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…

Casually making millions, almost certainly illegally, while her district suffers as one of the nation’s most severe when it comes to income inequality. [0]

Every day I become more and more convinced that all politicians are basically the same - chasing self-interests, power, and prestige.

[0] https://www.ppic.org/publication/income-inequality-in-califo...

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#337

Post by maest »

mattferderer wrote: post #56
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…

I would like more oversight here but I don't know if these are great examples. I do (without evidence) believe a lot of these people use insider information. Pelosi's husband has been very bullish for a long time on Tesla, Apple & tech in general I do believe. Gottheimer did what I think is a Bull Call spread which means in February, after a crazy run up in market prices in January, he bet that MSFT would go up a lit…

unusualwhales are incentivised to talk their own book so it's safe to assume they've cherry picked these examples.

The honest way to see if politicians get an outsized return from this type of trading is to run a backtest, with appropriate hedges where you buy whenever anyone buys and sell whenever anyone sells and hold for a medium amount of time (3-6 weeks seems reasonable). unusualwhales know this so the fact that this sort of analysis is missing is telling. In particular, note how they provide stats for what the trading trends are, but not for the outsized performance.

The charts at the end of the article are a lot less impressive and they don't obviously look better than random.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#338

Post by pessimizer »

psychlops wrote: post #151
wpietri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the behind-the-scenes truth, I think the appearance of conflicting interests is a problem regardless. For a lot of elected offices and high public service positions, I think their wealth should be put into a blind trust, one constrained by law to buy broad, boring things like index funds. That would surely be a problem for some individuals. But I don't think it's a systemic problem. We only need to find 0.00…

Just require them to announce their trades publicly 24 hours in advance. And let them manage their own finances. All these shenanigan's would disappear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act#Amendment

When the public was angry, Congress passed the STOCK act. After the news cycle was over, they repealed disclosure unanimously.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#339

Post by steveBK123 »

Havoc wrote: post #271
steveBK123 wrote: post #117

Of course if you actually work in financial services industry, your personal trading is extremely restricted. This is regardless of being in no position to see positions/flow/etc that would give you any insider edge. The industry generally sees it as easier to show compliance by having locked down personal trading by employees. Usually this takes the form of - ETFs only, pre-clearance required, 30 day holding periods…

> and sometimes all of the above. And you need to grant them access to the broker data feed and no derivatives. It's in part why I'm suddenly into crypto.

lot of them banning crypto or requiring disclosure as well

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#340

Post by hyperpape »

snarf21 wrote: post #330
wpietri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever the behind-the-scenes truth, I think the appearance of conflicting interests is a problem regardless. For a lot of elected offices and high public service positions, I think their wealth should be put into a blind trust, one constrained by law to buy broad, boring things like index funds. That would surely be a problem for some individuals. But I don't think it's a systemic problem. We only need to find 0.00…

I agree that ALL government employees, their spouses and companies should own no individual stocks until they leave office/job. However, the politicians are just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the rigged game of Wall Street. We have bigger fish to fry but no one seems to like fish anymore.

I agree in spirit, but this is overbroad. The various branches of government employ millions of people. A cop, or VHA nurse, or my friend who works a non-managerial role at the EPA can own stock. It's the decision-makers who were should be concerned about. That group extends beyond congress, but doesn't contain literally every government employee.
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