Since then, I believe there have been 9 other proposals similar to this one. None of them have been even called to a vote.
It seem like Congress is pretty unwilling to regulate its own trading.
Until they are, feel free to track the trading here: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/
https://processtypefoundry.com/fonts/colfax/
I might add the following for a slightly crisper look:
text-rendering: optimizeLegibility;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;It's really hard to prove someone traded off of insider information if they make a decision to buy/sell for themselves. If they don't tell anyone else why they made the trade, you don't really have any proof that it was made off of material non-public information.
If a congressman is forced to ask someone else to trade for them, they might be careless and you might be able to find evidence via text messages or phone records.
The last time a U.S. Representative got convicted for insider trading, it was because he called his son to tell him to trade a stock that he had insider information on: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-congressman-chri...
Are you now in a position where you have to prove a negative? Are there people in prison right now because of exactly this type of occurrence, or is it so circumstantial that it's not even pursued unless there is additional evidence, e.g. you always buy $500-1k in stock but after this call you buy $10k in options or something.
The people who do get convicted are usually those who were being particularly egregious or who pissed someone off enough to rat them out. For example, Martha Stewart got convicted because her assistant (whom she regularly called a "little shit") decided to testify against her.
https://wibc.com/154888/climate-czar-john-kerry-throws-wife-....
The point is repeatedly emphasizing that "personally" he doesn't have a plane meanwhile repeatedly using his wife's plane while being the "Special Presidential Envoy for Climate".
https://www.usglc.org/positions/special-presidential-envoy-f...
New barriers include: the actual work of moving money around to and from friends and family and directing trades, counterparty risks in doing so (e.g. sibling dies and leaves money to someone else or takes the money and runs), tax complications, or reputational risk if found to be violating "spirit of the law" that might harm election odds. There are surely more frictions and barriers like these that I'm not capturing.
Presumably because they're on different committees. Or have different friends.
Just like existing law, pending legislation is too vast for any one person to know it all.
I haven't checked the NANC holdings, but her Microsoft position has definitely been carrying our Nancy Pelosi Strategy on Quiver.
You can see the backtest performance here, but the holdings and advanced metrics are behind a paywall (apologies in advance): https://www.quiverquant.com/strategies/
As others have pointed out, there is a delay between when the trades are made and when they are disclosed and our strategy is able to act on them.
However, this is somewhat countered by the fact that politicians tend to hold stocks for long periods of time.
There are definitely some examples of politicians trading a stock right before a massive market moving event, but I think they are generally looking at a longer time horizon when they are investing.
They do well. Generally, retiring their tenure wealthier than their congressional salary would allow at a 100% savings rate.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1017/s0022381613000194
> For all trades reported electronically and on paper, the buys and sells have the same pattern; they underperform slightly for the first few months and then outperform the market after 150 days by less than 1 percent, which is not statistically significant. Otherwise, the returns of the buys and sells appear to be relatively random.
> The results show that neither Democrat nor Republican senators are especially skilled at picking stocks to buy.
https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2020/04/us-senators-stock-pi...
The holdings and advanced metrics are behind a paywall (apologies in advance).
* Congress members don't get paid much and like money.
* They are often old with healthcare issues. Their govt health plans are not great.
* They maintain two residences, one in DC and one in their home state. AOC rents an apartment in NYC that she never lives in and one in DC. This is a huge expense.
Closing this privilege might have other unintended effects... Only the very wealthy can afford to be in Congress.
> Congress members don't get paid much and like money.
They're paid $174,000 per year. [1] That's 3–4x the median US salary. I know it's not, like, lucrative, but if they wanted a lucrative salary they should have gotten a different job!
> They are often old with healthcare issues. Their govt health plans are not great.
Fix the government health plan. Or better yet, make it a public health plan available to everyone!
> They maintain two residences, one in DC and one in their home state. AOC rents an apartment in NYC that she never lives in and one in DC. This is a huge expense.
There are only 541 of these people (plus aides, etc). The government should have an official building for sitting Congresspeople to live in. Like a dorm, but for electeds!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salaries_of_members_of_the_Uni...
They could also vote themselves a higher salary, but I guess they realize that would be very unpopular with the general public who, for the most part, get paid far less than politicians. The complaint essentially boils down to spoiled brats whining about wanting to be part of the economic elite. For most of the public, this complaint falls on deaf ears, particularly when it's coming from people who already have a great deal of power and are insulated from the realities of life experienced by most of the people they're ostensibly meant to be representing.
"Boo hoo, I already earn 3-4x more than most people in my state and belong to an elite class of policy makers but I'm so impoverished and oppressed because the billionaires have bigger houses than me :("
Honestly more insufferable than Marie Antoinette.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
> We find no evidence of superior investment performance whether we look in aggregate or at Senators specifically accused of informed trading. Over a six-month horizon, stocks bought by House Members underperform on average by 26 basis points, while stocks sold underperform by 11 basis points.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/congresss-crypto-traders-t...
You can search for individuals on top to see their full transaction list. Lummis bought up to $100K of Bitcoin in 2021: https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Cynth...
Anyway when I search under correct name, I only find 2 trades, from 2021. She really had no other trades?
Here's where you can search for the source disclosures - only seeing two trades on her periodic transaction reports: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/
On a federal level, There are safeguards we can add and perplexity to trading stock for congressmen. One such rule is the disclosure rule. This makes it a slight pain to invest. A second rule I propose is committee conflict rule, declare stocks that are in conflict with a committee hearing, and offer recusal to the chair each time on a hearing with a potential conflict. A third rule is prohibition on potential stock trades after a committee hearing for 90 days or until hearing is published. And do not disclose details of the hearing with anyone until it is published.
These rules add pains and discouragement to stock trades. But outright bans are not there.
(Nancy Pelosi is interesting. She entered Congress worth about ~3-4 million. Now she is worth $100 million, give or take $20 million depending on the estimate. Interesting. I'm not saying it's Insider Trading, but the probability...)
Meanwhile, her husband is a VC, and probably makes a good deal of money for them as well.
Didn't she touch it though? A lot of people would be multimillionaires if they only put money in and never took money out.
The question is, with what she did invest, and the money she did take out, would she still be that wealthy.
Also, that's the lower bound by what people estimated she had when she entered congress and close to the upper bound of what she would be worth today.
But it's entirely possible that someone in the SF area with a SV husband beat the S&P without resorting to insider trading on public markets. Heck, the house she bought has probably beaten the S&P.
To reiterate, I always assumed she was insider trading. These numbers are making me question that.
Most people don't lump sum in the market like that, it probably ignores the taxes she would have to pay if she took the money out now, and most people use some of the money in the meantime.
I'm just saying if you lived a good lifestyle, the money is already mostly taxed, and you didn't invest everything all-at-once, and you still have the amount of money you would get with lump-sum and never touch S&P, you're doing far far better than the market.