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Comment by WheatMillington | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes I feel like I live on a different planet to the people on HN. I don't own $15k of ANY single stock. In fact I don't have significant savings outside of retirement savings (which I deliberately don't manage) of that magnitude. If I had $15k of any given stock, I'd have an extreme personal interest in the performance of that stock

IDK, maybe it's that I don't work in tech and I'm too young or too old or whatever (37, 2 kids) but it just seems crazy to me to think that for some people $15k in any SINGLE stock isn't a meaningful amount of money.

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There are people on HN working for the big tech companies who are being granted that $15k worth of stock every month. ($180k/year) At the more senior levels and/or with some stock appreciation, it's not unheard-of for >50% of compensation to be in the form of RSUs.

Obviously they should sell-on-vest and diversify into index funds, but a lot of them choose to buy and hold some individual stocks that they're bullish on as well.

You've certainly got a point, but if a regulator has the ability to indirectly swing the valuation 10%, they stand to gain at most $1.5k which should be in the realm of a week's pay. It's an interest to be sure, but it would be hard to use it to finance a Lamborghini habit.

Regulators have the ability to swing the entire market.

The point is: would you be willing to risk massive fines and jail time for making unethical decisions to try to turn your $15k into $30k if you did? Probably not.

But if you could move your entire life savings into a stock the incentive for shady stuff increases significantly.

What are you talking about? There is no risk, the point is they're perfectly allowed to hold $15k in these stocks.

> the point is they're perfectly allowed to hold $15k in these stocks

They're not allowed to insider trade on it, or corruptly modify their regulatory duties on account of it, irrespective of whether is $1 or ten thousand.

The risk is doing something illegal or unethical to increase the value of their holdings. The larger their holdings, the larger the incentive to do that illegal or unethical thing.

Thankfully, all federal government positions like this have clearly specified salary ranges.

So let's take the DOJ, since they have easy to find vacancies.

https://www.justice.gov/legal-careers/vacancies?position=1&t...

They are mostly GS-15, which is 150-175k pay per year. They do fine on benefits, etc.

15k in stock is not a ton for them.

Certainly not something you'd mess up a job or career over.

My thinking is pretty inline with yours here, it’s a big number for day-to-day stuff but probably a fair number to have as the cutoff. Imo

If you have $211K or more in your 401(k) invested in S&P 500 or similar, you technically have $15K invested in a single stock: $AAPL.

If you're invested in the S&P500 wouldn't you fall under the separate limits for mutual funds?

The amount of money, relatively, is negligible. On the other hand, in the human psyche it can create significant bias.

Specially, for example, humans have an aversion to loss. It's true for small amounts. Certainly, for larger amounts it's just as bad. That is, few people regardless of resources would reach into their pocket and toss $15K into a fire pit. We're simply not wired for that.

And that wiring is going to influence the decision made. The amount is a minor factor.

Some people don't care about the money they have and it's not always because they have well above avg.

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