Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress • Hacker News Board

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#41

Post by greenshackle2 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

monkeybutton wrote: post #11

CameronNemo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time? No. The legislators have to report their trades a couple months after they make them, IIRC.

That's unfortunate; If was real time a copycat investment strategy would work, right?

tl;dr yes but you would probably get beaten to the punch by high frequency traders, and risk being exploited by the discloser.

If you had sneaky exclusive access to their trading flow in real time then yeah sure you could copy them and get the benefits of insider trading. (And you might be guilty of insider trading yourself? I'm not sure how the law works.)

If everyone knows Alice is doing insider trading and knows her trades, then when Alice buys X at $10.00, there will probably be other copycats piling into X and driving its price up, so you won't be able to get the same price as Alice, unless you're faster than everyone else.

Since you don't know what the actual inside information is, you don't know if it's still worth it to buy at $10.20, $10.30, etc. Maybe the inside info was only slightly better than expected earnings and the price end up being only $10.05.

This is somewhat exploitable by Alice, she doesn't need insider information anymore, she just has to buy random stock Z and disclose it, watch copycats pile into Z and drive its price up, then sell it back at a higher price.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#42

Post by dvaun » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

genericone wrote: post #2

Where are they aggregating all this insider data from? Is there an index of stocks being traded by government insiders and officials that can be tracked in real-time?

The Office of the Clerk of the House has a page for downloading Zip files of annual data[0].

If you take the DocID from the XML or TXT files in those sets you can send a request to:

  https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/-pdfs//.pdf

- works for the values "ptr" and "financial"

- self-explanatory

- the DocID from the entries in the XML or TXT files

Example: Nancy Pelosi disclosure/filing on 2021-04-09[1]

[0]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/Financi...

[1]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/202...

This would be fun to play around with. I wonder if there's a better endpoint to source this from?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#43

Post by BrianOnHN » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

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.

Sounds like overreaching blanket regulation.

What if we just regulated the 0.01% who's wealth is such that it makes the top elected officials in our country have a seemingly insignificant compensation.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#44

Post by elliekelly » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

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.

This is more or less what everyone in the registered investment adviser & mutual fund world must do. There’s quite a lot of compliance software to facilitate approval and checks before and after a transaction is effected in a personal account and the personal transaction history is compared, broadly, with market performance and internal fund transactions periodically to check for overlapping trades (+/- a week) in the same direction.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#45

Post by throwaway1777 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #24

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?

If this starts making a stink, they're going to create the ability to not report your stock purchases.

I think opposite is more likely. After the GameStop fiasco there is a push for more transparency, not less.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#46

Post by barbazoo » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

Love that data this is making public but I wish it wasn't always so much blue vs red, Republicans vs Democrats, who is worse, my team or theirs. They're all corrupt to some degree, why make it even more partisan that it already is.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#47

Post by christiansakai » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

Meanwhile ordinary people still believe that the war is against their fellow people, in identity politics, religion, sexual orientation etc. Devide et Impera.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#48

Post by Scoundreller » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

aaomidi wrote: post #24

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?

If this starts making a stink, they're going to create the ability to not report your stock purchases.

That’s what’s happening with flight tracking info.

It got too easy to see who’s flying their private jets and where.

Meanwhile if you travel by car, get bent.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#49

Post by chrisbolt » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #27

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 don't know if specific trades are sketchy or legit, but I do think there should be some sort of log of net worth when you join congress, senate, houses of parliament etc and politicians be expected to explain any large gains over their time in office.

Like https://www.opensecrets.org/personal-finances ?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#50

Post by BrianOnHN » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

Similar from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26807695

HN can't see the forest for the trees.

Trading isn't the issue.

Why are our top elected officials not compensated enough? Income inequality. If it isn't trading, they'll chase Bezos until they "get what they deserve" one way or another.