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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

#461

Post by stjohnswarts »

BurningFrog wrote: post #293
akudha wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Pelosi worth like 100 million or something? How much money is enough for these people? :( How quickly are these trades made public? Maybe we should just copy the congress people's trades and make some profit ourselves :P

Any sum is fine as long as you got it honestly. The problem with Pelosi and others is that the money comes from abusing their power, and is in effect taken from other investors.

I don't agree, I think that tax load after 100 million (or some similar ridiculous figure) should be ludicrously high. Taxes never stopped rich people from wanting to become richer, lets just make it a bit harder and put that money back into circulation.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#462

Post by gadders »

chris11 wrote: post #66
gadders wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My employer has 105b plans available if you want to trade outside of trading windows. I think we should have something like that for politicians. Insider trading would be less of an issue if politicians and spouses were required to publicly announce trades 30-90 days before they were made. I don't think that would impact long term trading strategies, and I think it's reasonable to ask politicians to give up short ter…

I know that in the front office in certain investment banks, you're not allowed to trade single stocks for your own account. You can only trade funds. I think a similar rule here might work.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#463

Post by echaozh »

godelski wrote: post #412
dan-robertson wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks! I actually appreciate the nuanced correction. I used insider trading as the term not specifically because the information was non-public but that it feels like they have inside knowledge since they are able to directly affect the markets. Maybe there is a better term for this? I don't think this still falls under what you said.

Market manipulation?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#464

Post by wdn »

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…

Rules are for thy not for me.

Congress insider trading is not new. Peter Schweitzer’s book “Throw all of them out” details them. The book was released in 2011.

How is this an acceptable. Is politicians above the law?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#466

Post by wpietri »

nitrogen wrote: post #134
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…

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?

The problem here is that they then will have do depend even more on others than people who choose the job do, which shifts the problem one ring out. So this will give more influence to lobbyists, who know their areas well and are experts in talking people into things. There's also the problem of staff. Politicians tend to bring key staff along with as they rise. But where will randomly selected legislators find a half-dozen people with the necessary knowledge and skills?

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#467

Post by etripe »

slashdev wrote: post #381
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…

You seem to have a fundamental misapprehension of capitalism. If you invest your capital, it's not being hoarded in a money bank like Scrooge McDuck. It's being put to use by the companies and institutions you invest in to provide products and services. Now I'm all for donating to charity, and it's a much better option than leaving massive wealth to your offspring, in my opinion. But investing your money is totally r…

> It's being put to use by the companies and institutions you invest in to provide products and services.

Only if you pretend that all stock trades happen when new stock is issued. That definitely isn't the case. As far as I understand there is a lot of trading between portfolios, where the company that originally issued the stock doesn't necessarily benefit except by increasing the value for future stock issues.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#468

Post by wpietri »

jb775 wrote: post #277
throwaway5752 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak for a lot of people that while I agree with you in principle, the sudden interest in this idea in Republican circles after the prior administration's absolute mockery of conflict of interest and self-dealing laws seems hypocritical.

Can you provide any sources for your claims that prove Trump administration personnel directly profited off any supposed self dealings? Or are you just pulling this out of your ass bc you are a lib? Also, who else specifically do you "speak for"? This article isn't even about self-serving decisions that may benefit politicians down the road...it's about politicians who are actively using politician-privy inside infor…

Why don't you tell us what you Googled for without being able to find anything.

Re: Unusual Stock Trading by Whales in US Congress

#470

Post by [deleted] »

jmoss20 wrote: post #429
pc86 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went from approximately $235 to $250, which is about 6%. On calls, especially short-dated ones, that can easily be a 40-50% gain. I've got a number of different MSFT LEAPS in my portfolio and they all went up 15%+ on that news.

Relative to their peers though: Alphabet went up almost 8% the same day, clearly not due to Microsoft's VR contract.

[deleted]
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