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Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

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Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#81

Post by kevinpet »

despideme wrote: post #63
Rebelgecko wrote: post #31

It's hard to find a calculator/data source that takes dividends into account, but it looks like if you bought an S&P500 index fund in May 2022 you'd be up around 18% depending on which day you purchased. So not very dramatic IMO

The point is not if the politicians did better than they would have with another investing approach. It's a standard conflict of interest: the appearance of insider trading is corrosive because others see it and figure it's "how the game is played." So they need to do the same to keep up.

You could say it doesn't matter and they need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and I would agree. However, it seems clear that the entire point of this particular trading bot and the project is in fact whether politicians did better than another investing approach.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#82

Post by alooPotato »

kbenson wrote: post #52
dmckeon wrote: post #21

Radical proposal: Rather than trying to police leakage of insider information, level the playing field for both politicians and fed employees by creating a dozen or so national mutual funds of at least 1,000 equity positions each that intend to model the US economy as a whole. Anyone can invest in them, but all US Federal employees and immediate family members are required to liquidate all other positions and hold on…

Wouldn't that just incentive those people to always favor the items in that fund, therefore providing an advantage to anything that makes in on the fund? Given two competitors in a market, what if the existing but inefficient one is in the fund but the new one that is trying to shake thing up and/or do a better job is not? You might see a lot more protectionism, and not just against companies of other nations, but ag…

i think thats the point?

better than favoring just a few stocks you have insider info on...

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#83

Post by OJFord »

cgriswald wrote: post #45
wellthisisgreat wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely unrelated by I just wondered if GP knew that “@“ doesn’t have any functionality but used as a sort of etiquette symbol.

It seems pretty dang useful to me to make it clear when you're referring to the username.

As a non-American, I always read that 'dang' as the moderator, and then it takes a second.

Relatedly, I was here many years before I realised (via that NYT or WSJ or whatever it was profile) that it's 'Dan G'!

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#84

Post by Rebelgecko »

its-summertime wrote: post #62
Rebelgecko wrote: post #31

It's hard to find a calculator/data source that takes dividends into account, but it looks like if you bought an S&P500 index fund in May 2022 you'd be up around 18% depending on which day you purchased. So not very dramatic IMO

A buying strategy that can compete with index funds is pretty interesting, isn't it?

Not necessarily. If my strategy is "pick 500 big companies, and buy shares weighted based on market cap" and it ends up mirroring the S&P500, I haven't done anything interesting.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#85

Post by ckardat123 »

fsdadsfdsalkj wrote: post #70
ckardat123 wrote: post #50

This is my tweet, thanks for sharing! If anyone is interested, I built a dashboard that tracks the performance of individual congressional stock trades here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/ It also allows you to search for trades by stock, instead of needing to parse through thousands of disclosure forms. I do want to mention one weakness of my data, which is that I don't currently parse hand-filed discl…

Where do you get the data?

House: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/FinancialDisclosure Senate: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#86

Post by tzs »

dmckeon wrote: post #21

Radical proposal: Rather than trying to police leakage of insider information, level the playing field for both politicians and fed employees by creating a dozen or so national mutual funds of at least 1,000 equity positions each that intend to model the US economy as a whole. Anyone can invest in them, but all US Federal employees and immediate family members are required to liquidate all other positions and hold on…

What do you mean by "immediate family"? That usually means spouse, parents, children, and siblings. Sometimes also grandparents and grandchildren.

If you mean something like that then your proposal seems overly restrictive. I don't see any point in say the USGS not being able to hire a seismologist they want to hire because the seismologist can't convince his brother to sell his Microsoft stock and his adult daughter to get rid of her Apple stock. Nothing that seismologist would be able to working at USGS is going to influence those stocks, nor is his work going to provide him with any inside information.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#87

Post by kristopolous »

dragonwriter wrote: post #67
kristopolous wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big supporter of a forced liquidation, without tax penalties, of all positions upon winning federal election. That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only virtuous people who are willing to selflessly sacrifice themselves for the public good. Those people do exist, we've just configured our electoral system in every way to discourage such admirable behavior. It d…

> That would of course dramatically limit the people who pursue public office to you know, only ... people convinced that the graft in office would offset the loss of opportunity from investment gains.

There are actually people that aren't self interested in public service, they do exist.

You can find them at state parks, libraries, museums and schools even. I've met plenty of scientists for instance, that work at universities, places like MBARI and JPL and for the city/county at lower salaries without stock options for the opportunity of public service.

They're real, we just need to get more of them in higher office

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#88

Post by adnmcq999 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22
strangesmells06 wrote: post #11

How does one get this information about congressional trades?

House: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/FinancialDisclosure Senate: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ Background: https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-congress-hides-stock-ho...

Does the following thing they make you acknowledge mean you can’t use this to pick stocks?

“It is unlawful to use the information contained in these Financial Disclosure Statements for (A) any unlawful purpose, (B) any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public, (C) determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual, or (D) use, directly or indirectly, in the solicitation of money for any political, charitable, or other purpose. See 5 U.S.C. app. § 105(c)(1),(2). In conformity with 2 U.S.C. § 104e(b)(3), certain personally identifiable information in these reports, not required to be disclosed, has been redacted.”

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#89

Post by bmitc »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #69
despideme wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not if the politicians did better than they would have with another investing approach. It's a standard conflict of interest: the appearance of insider trading is corrosive because others see it and figure it's "how the game is played." So they need to do the same to keep up.

Are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to buy stock at all? Because you could cherry-pick any period of time to highlight that they have outperformed the market.

> Are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to buy stock at all?

There are several jobs that are less powerful and have less conflicts of interest where that is indeed the policy.

Re: Trading bot that buys stocks bought by politicians is up 20% since May 2022

#90

Post by despideme »

OJFord wrote: post #79
despideme wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is not if the politicians did better than they would have with another investing approach. It's a standard conflict of interest: the appearance of insider trading is corrosive because others see it and figure it's "how the game is played." So they need to do the same to keep up.

If the 'other investing approach' is a broad market index like the S&P 500, where is the 'appearance if insider trading'? GP's point is that they could be almost entirely in the S&P500, with some minor innocuous deviation (tracking error, frankly!) and it would look the same. So this isn't really suspicious at all. Sure it's a US-focussed index, but isn't that you want from your politicians? (Outsider perspective her…

Anecdata to follow. Does this not look suspicious? https://www.threads.net/@quiverquantitative/post/CzcB_jyA_pD The politician in question is a 69 year old former football coach who bought stock in a cloud-based e-commerce software vendor before the company was acquired, then when the stock spiked 50%, he sold it right away.
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