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Comment by DevKoala | Hacker News Reader

This 100%. For example, Nancy Pelosi should be named the Wolf of Wall Street. Look at that amazing trade she made on cyber security companies right before the hacks on the government were announced.

Source: https://housestockwatcher.com/summary_by_rep/Hon.%20Nancy%20...

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Nancy Pelosi’s story is her husband does the stock trading without her involvement (or even her knowledge prior to her regular reports to Congress about trading activity). If true (and assuming she’s not giving privileged info to her husband), that means no insider trading.

Having said that, I really think Congresspeople should be prohibited from trading in individual stocks entirely, and restricted to just investing in index funds, if for no other reason than the PR problem of congresspeople appearing to profit off of their position.

Wish we could see something like that happen, but you are going to need some representatives to vote against their best interest. Kind of like why run off voting will never see the light of day.

The voted to pass the STOCK act, requiring disclosing these trades within ~30 days

30 days? That's some bullshit. Legislators trading based on closed-doors meetings related to "national security" (covid briefings) or even pending market-moving legislation should be on par with insider trading. It's not, and they will never collectively vote against their interests, to use their information for personal gain.

That is all on the table. The SEC can convict federal government employees of securities fraud for trading on this type of insider info

I'd like to see them required to make their portfolios open to the public in real time. That way, the rest of us could invest in an index fund based on congressional investments, and share in their success.

That's heavily assuming Congresspeople are successful at investing. Assuming insider trading is still illegal for Congresspeople, you will have a hard time picking between "people not insider trading, good at picking stocks though", "people not insider trading, bad at picking stocks", "people who are insider trading, and actually good at it", and "people who are insider trading, but still make terrible choices".

Good luck.

Most traders suck at trading, if a congress person with no financial history starts beating the market, I’d bet a lot that they’re cheating.

If they're shorting or just holding for a short time it's trading. Otherwise long-term positions are investments.

Ye, that is just a ridiculous excuse. I agree that the option too be tempted should also be removed.

I’m under the impression that representatives are legally incapable of insider trading. Being in the congress privileges them to use the information they hear during speech and debate as they see fit.

Can you name the companies and a source? I recall a few weeks ago there was a HN post about congressman but I didn’t recall seeing cyber security in the list.

https://housestockwatcher.com/summary_by_rep/Hon.%20Nancy%20...

Crowdstrike on September of 2020. I remember I went for it too, and it paid really well once the news the government had been hacked came out.

They made a killing on Tesla calls for one, million dollar investment. https://newsthud.com/disclosure-fillings-reveal-pelosi-purch...

It looks like her TSLA stock is down from when she purchased it, because there is no corresponding sale and TSLA is trading for less than it was on 12/21/2020 (and has been for the last month... the disclosure period for trades). So instead of purchasing an index fund, which would be up 10% since 12/21/20, she purchased TSLA which is down ~5%.

So this trade underperformed the market by 15%, which seems like it is a horrible trade. Am I missing something? Why did you say she made a killing?

They didn’t buy stock, they bought option calls which use leverage to profit massively of small movements in the ticker. They are incredibly risky, and Nancy’s husband bet between 500k and $1M on them, which means that if the trade had gone sour, they could have lost that immediately. That’s WallStreetBets levels of gambling, and a strange behavior for an otherwise safe trader.

Also, AFAIK there has been no update on whether those calls are still open or closed. They could have sold the covered calls already at a massive profit before the stock started to tank.

you changed the subject, though, or at least the target. parent comment was about David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two GOP senators who profited off the pandemic; this post redirects the topic, and the outrage, to Nancy Pelosi.

it’s 100% legit to say that any Congressperson who trades stocks unethically should be criticized. but when I saw a deft change of target like this, I was not at all surprised to find you defending Trump in your post history.

I’m partisan too, but let’s keep it above board.

Or when she or her husband longed TSLA calls a few days before Biden announced the government (Secret Service? Forgot exactly which part) will be buying EVs.

Lol, doesn't take insider trading to see that one coming...

And it could also be insider trading. This was a market moving announcement (in TSLA) a few days after she bought.

There's plausible deniability for sure, it might've been coincidence, and I'm not denying that.

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