Politicians Who Voted to Ban TikTok May Own as Much as $126M in Tech Stocks | Hacker News Reader

Politicians Who Voted to Ban TikTok May Own as Much as $126M in Tech Stocks

gizmodo.com

30 pointsdragonbonheur11 comments

What a meaningless article. But it is from gizmodo so I am not surprised.

Anyone who has a decent amount of ETF that tracks SP500 (or similar) would have a significant portion of their money in Apple, Meta, Microsoft etc. That has been the case for years.

It might not be the most informative article but it does help remind us that elected officials often have incentives outside just "public good".

edit: typos

Sure. But that wasn't the intent of the article.

Part of being an elected official should be divesting yourself of conflicts of interest, but that isn't US law.

These are blue chip stocks and a large part of the S&P 500. You could write this same article about virtually any business legislation.

How is it not the intent of the article?

> Part of being an elected official should be divesting yourself of conflicts of interest, but that isn't US law.

I completely agree.

> These are blue chip stocks and a large part of the S&P 500. You could write this same article about virtually any business legislation.

Yes, You could write this same article about smaller stocks or privately held endeavors. I thought this is the point of the story, just involving one example.

You get below the fold before there is any indication this is normal. The article is basically here is this analysis showing Congress has a conflict of interest with tiktok legislation. But it's really a dog bites man story that Congress enriches themselves in office by not addressing their own conflict of interest.

We are going to see lots of PR disguised as journalism from Byte Dance (Yass, Sequoia) and US Tech companies. Moreover, we will see lots US/China propaganda disguised as journalism. My cynical view is Gizmodo is taking this issue and framing it as TikTok specific, to carry someone else's water.

Ban insider trading, not legislation.

Anyway, Legislators profiting by moving wealth from China to USA is less insidious than the reverse.

$124M? That's like Dr Evil's "one meeeellion dollars". The mentioned companies are with about $10T total. The real money trading on news is in option, not holding equities.

Uhhh, insider training for non Congress members is illegal... Make it illegal for government officials to trade stocks while members.

Is that a lot? I'm in VTSAX so I definitely have some money in tech stocks

<IMO> The amount does not matter. </IMO>

While I think this article is a bit of a nothing burger, I really wish politicians had the same rules for purchasing stocks as employees of a company. Specific times when purchases can be made and stock purchase plans. Maybe even limit them to index funds.

> Politicians Who Voted to Ban TikTok May Own as Much as $126M in Tech Stocks

No. What is this ? Witch hunting ? /s

And, anyway, how much they get from "Tech" besides stocks ?

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