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Comment by Bostonian | Hacker News Reader

Owning individual stocks encourages lawmakers to think about how their legislation affects businesses, which is a good thing. I think stock trades should be disclosed online the same evening that they are placed, so that the information that senators and congressman are acting on is quickly disseminated.

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> I think stock trades should be disclosed online the same evening that they are placed

That's not the normal insider trading rule. The normal insider trading rule is that you cannot trade on inside information at all.

> so that the information that senators and congressman are acting on is quickly disseminated.

The way to do that is to disseminate the information before making any trades, so everyone has an opportunity to decide whether they want to trade on it.

> you cannot trade on inside information at all.

Yes, and just for the sake of clarity, "inside" also means non-public. Once it is announced, it is no longer insider info and you can trade on it.

Right. Lawmakers should follow the regular insider trading rules. They should be considered insiders for all their trades.

I'd do it the other way around, I expect senators to abstain if they even have a whiff of conflict of interest.

> how their legislation affects businesses

Especially the businesses they own shares of...

>" so that the information that senators and congressman are acting on is quickly disseminated."

No matter how quickly this information gets out, they still have first mover advantage. There is simply no way to compete with that.

Publish intention to trade X hours or days before a transaction is agreed upon?

You could say the exact same thing about decision makers at a public company, and yet they're barred from trading their company stock on information that wasn't public at the time of the trade.

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