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

Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

unusualwhales.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 493 posts

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#341

Post by godelski »

throwawaygh wrote: post #194
psychlops wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why not just prohibit members of Congress of owning stock? They are some of the most powerful people in the world. Why is it so much to ask that a Senator or especially Representative serving in the most powerful legislative body in the world just take a cash position for 2-6 years?

Because investments are still a great way to hold your savings. The problem here isn't that they have investments (e.g. a 401k), it is that they are acting on insider information. Which is illegal to everyone else. At _minimum_ they should be held to the same standards. Though I think most people agree that they should be held to _higher_ standards, which gives suggestions like a blind trust. And obviously strict rules of if they break the blind part that they get jail time.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#342

Post by delusional »

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 don't think normal middle class government workers owning stocks is a real problem. I get where you're coming from (technically they could have inside information), but it's not nearly as impaction as the elected officials having very large swings hinge on their own policies.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#343

Post by allturtles »

devmunchies wrote: post #308
ABeeSea wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pelosi in Dec 22 was against more stimulus. This is not true. It’s very odd to see the kind of right-wing conspiracies based on outright fabrications spread on HN as literal truths. Here is an article from December 22 were Pelosi is calling for more stimulus: www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/22/trump-calls-covid-relief-bill-unsuitable-and-demands-congress-add-higher-stimulus-payments.html Here is her direct tweet dated 12/…

> right-wing conspiracies based on outright fabrications maybe on that one point, but the fact the democrats trade way more on the markets is not a conspiracy theory , it's an outright conspiracy. why are you defending these people? because they're democrats on paper?

I believe GP is defending facts against malicious lies. That seems always a good thing, regardless of whom the lies are directed towards.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#344

Post by pishpash »

slaymaker1907 wrote: post #76
sethammons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my naive solution: politicians become monks. They go without. They are provided modest housing and budgets. I'm sure there are zounds of issues with it, but I like to imagine servant leaders who go without to do more for the communities they serve.

That doesn't really solve the problem because how do we make them become monks? We already have a blueprint on how to hold them accountable: hold them to the same standard as those working in financial services with access to PII. Essentially make it impossible for them to be active traders; they can even still invest in ETFs and hands off advisors/roboadvisors like Betterment.

Even then, do you want people who are incentivized to pump-and-dump the macro market during their term? You'd almost need to enforce this for 10 years or more, even if it goes beyond their term.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#345

Post by djrogers »

pessimizer wrote: post #338
psychlops wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Disclosure still applies for Congress (and POTUS/VP), it was repealed for 28k other gov't employees.

Also, it's mandated 45 days after trades - not in advance as many here are calling for.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#346

Post by psychlops »

gibolt wrote: post #306
psychlops wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't work. If they are aware of a huge non-public deal, the market may react based on their trade, but not nearly as much as when the deal goes public.

It would help. There are already funds that track the money of politicians and invest accordingly. If they submitted a large options trade, the funds would front run them and take away much of the profit.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#347

Post by somethoughts »

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…

Or is this something that would be more at the primary level, where it really is more about personality and personal qualities than party?

>> For sure there are many factors that influence someone's vote. I think you're right - its more likely to cause leadership rotation within the parties where the rest of the factors are more similar (i.e. stance on gun rights, etc.). The challenge today is that incumbent politicians within their own party tend to have great name recognition among voters - but are more likely to be in the pockets of corporations. This would enable challengers within the party to potentially have an issue they can highlight.

"lol everyone does it"

>> And perhaps articles prove in a data science-y way that perhaps this is true - many politicians are doing it.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#348

Post by socialist_coder »

wpietri wrote: post #107
sethammons wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my naive solution: politicians become monks. They go without. They are provided modest housing and budgets. I'm sure there are zounds of issues with it, but I like to imagine servant leaders who go without to do more for the communities they serve.

I'd be happy with that, but perhaps an easier solution is to make them moderately wealthy. Pay them a top 5% salary with a guaranteed pension for life, plus mandatory open finances for life. Then there's much less incentive to resort to graft.

100% Agree. Salaries for elected officials should be far higher and then make punishments for this very very strict so there's zero incentive to graft.

The people running our country should not be making less than any typical c-staff or high level executive. They should be making lawyer/doctor/c-staff level money.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#349

Post by dan-robertson »

godelski wrote: post #341
throwawaygh wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just prohibit members of Congress of owning stock? They are some of the most powerful people in the world. Why is it so much to ask that a Senator or especially Representative serving in the most powerful legislative body in the world just take a cash position for 2-6 years?

Because investments are still a great way to hold your savings. The problem here isn't that they have investments (e.g. a 401k), it is that they are acting on insider information. Which is illegal to everyone else. At _minimum_ they should be held to the same standards. Though I think most people agree that they should be held to _higher_ standards, which gives suggestions like a blind trust. And obviously strict rul…

It’s not insider information. You might consider it material non-public information, which you can’t trade on in Europe, but in the US insider trading has a much more narrow definition: roughly it has to come from the insiders of the company. If your friend at Microsoft tells you that they won some massive contract, you can’t trade on it. If you overhear that news in a café, you can. If your friend at the government tells you they’re going to agree on a big contract with Microsoft, I don’t know if you’d be allowed or not but if you weren’t allowed I don’t think it would be insider trading.

Anyway, that obviously isn’t legal advice. And I agree that people should expect legislators to act with high integrity, but that’s not really how they vote.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#350

Post by jrockway »

c22 wrote: post #65
abfan1127 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

again, the government's role should be protection of protection of person and property. You're conflating "govern" and "control". There are other means to control. In reality, your goal will never be met because no one is going to openly step into that scenario and be altruistic, certainly not all 536 people.

That's a pretty pessimistic view. Perhaps the individuals currently filling those roles wouldn't go for it, but it seems like we might be able to find 536 altruistic idealists somewhere in America.

I didn't dive deeply into this data, but it doesn't sound like we even need to find 536 idealists. If you sort by number of trades descending, it becomes less than mine very quickly (I buy 4 mutual funds once a month, automatically). If you sort by value of trades descending, it looks like there are only a handful of officials with any meaningful amount of money in the stock market. (For some value of meaningful; there is an example in there about a $50,000 trade, and it just doesn't seem like very much money to me. 50 million dollars, get out that microscope. $50,000? Doesn't change anyone's life, so not really worth being corrupt for.)
Post reply on HN