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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. Completely unethical. Our representatives are complete and utter scumbags.

Needless to say, this should be illegal. I honestly wish we could retroactively imprison them for doing this.

The current state of the U.S. is so damn embarrassing and shameful. I literally cringe when I imagine internationals seeing what we do here.

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No, the truth appears to be boring and ordinary.

The senator bought the shares on the 28th; the day the company issued a press release. If you go to the link below, you'll see what looks like it might be insider trading by others, but that occurred on the 23rd, not the 28th. He bought along with everyone else when information was public and he sold to take a quick gain.

If you go to the link the parent provided and set the range for January 3, 2013 through February 3, 2013, you'll see the following:

-The stock traded at around $2.80-$3.00 from January 1-January 22. In other words for almost all of the month.

-On January 23 (Wed) the stock jumps to $3.75, stabilizing to around $3.30 a share by January 25 (Friday). Something is happening

-On January 28 (Monday) the stock gaps up and opens at around $5.00 a share. That day at 7:00 a.m. the company issues a press release that it has had success with a new renal drug:

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/keryx-biopharmaceut...

If you know which direction the released news will move the stock and roughly when the news will be released, you could sit waiting to pull the trigger faster than most people who were not similarly advantaged. It would be silly to do something egregious, but competently leveraging a persistent informational advantage will still lead to significant relative gains in the long term.

> The current state of the U.S. is so damn embarrassing and shameful. I literally cringe when I imagine internationals seeing what we do here.

Sadly, the concept of politicians using their positions for personal gain is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

True. Its also Common in many developing and undemocratic nations.

It IS illegal as defined by the STOCK Act of 2012.

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

What can we do?

The senators are probably thinking "What can you do?".

Hope the FBI does its job. That's on the President to prosecute and enforce corruption. One of the many duties of the President and the cabinet.

So give up, then

Write a letter

if you're a US Taxpayer, file a complaint with the SEC here: https://www.sec.gov/oiea/Complaint.html

It’s hard to do much. Senators can just tip off firms and friends.

As I mentioned above, it's a biotech stock. Those sorts of jumps (and dumps) happen all the time around FDA approval dates.

Yeah, but perhaps he knew in advance that the FDA would approve?

Of course, it could also have been modelling based on public info or simple gambling.

Nobody is surprised that the stock went up or down.

>God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading.

How do you figure?

A U.S. senator buys random pharma stock the day before it announces their renal drug passed a trial, and then sold immediately after announcing.

So he traded the catalyst.

Keryx didn't apply for FDA approval until months later.

You're assuming some senator would have access to confidential FDA reports. This is not likely to be the case.

What is likely to happen is people betting on new biotech issues. This looks like it is what happened. He turned about to right on that occasion.

That's a straw man. The pharma company hadn't even applied for FDA approval yet.

So it was random price action? No catalyst? Then to cry insider trading is beyond absurd.

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