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Senate Stock Watcher

677 points by ericmay 7y ago

vinniejames 7y ago
Where does this data come?
- croshan 7y ago
  From the bottom of the page: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/
croshan 7y ago
The general public doesn't have great trading strategies, but Senators may be more well informed. I wonder how a bot based off of their trades would do.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  I suspect they're sophisticated enough to turn something like an "index fund of what the people in charge buy" into a profit by making sure the timing of the reporting makes it more profitable for them. Since the reporting isn't instantaneous, they of course also have insider knowledge of their own trades and that those trades would influence markets and when. They could screw around with the timing of trades to give misleading stories, like selling off a bunch of stuff just before they file a report and then buying it after their action tanks the price. But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a record of how well Senators do in the stock market compared to an index fund (which I believe are also run by well informed people)? That might shame them into changing the rules if it looks bad. Of course, I don't know enough to say they aren't behaving themselves. Some cases that look suspicious might, when taken as a whole with their other trades, average out and make clear that they lose money even when they have insider knowledge that they will lose money. Somehow I doubt that, but if it's truly a blind trust or an independent fund it should be true and would increase faith in our elected officials to see hard data for.
  - tantalor 7y ago
    You can fix that by coupling their trades with the "index fund", so their bid/ask for X shares at price $Y is combined with some # of shares of the common fund proportional to shares held by all members. Then the trade is executed atomically and we get the same price.
  - thekyle 7y ago
    > But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a record of how well Senators do in the stock market I think it's kinda funny that you called a stock index as a "virtual index fund". Feels like we've come full circle.
    - neltnerb 7y ago
      Thank you! I meant in the sense that it's not a useful thing to buy, but it is funny :-)
- foobarian 7y ago
  I would be pretty surprised if various algo-trading houses don't already do it.
mulmen 7y ago
Would be interesting to create a senate-tracking "index" fund. Wonder how that performs against the market.
- noitsnot 7y ago
  I think the site is definitely a good start. I would like to see accumulated data and charting. Which stocks have been bought and sold by week or month, etc.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  I am only half joking, but I can see advertising already. "Make money the way insiders do".
- mattkrause 7y ago
  The STOCK Act (or Ethics in Government Act, actually) only requires reporting within 30-45 days of purchase/sale, so your fund will lag behind whatever market-moving events they're trading on.
  - personjerry 7y ago
    If you copy the long term plays it could still be viable.
    - foob4r 7y ago
      You wouldn't know if it's long term. Day 1 - stock purchase Day 45 - reported Day 46 - you buy or not? Day 45 - stock sold Day 90 - reported Day 91 - you've already lost
      - personjerry 7y ago
        I mean investments that are typically long term, such as LEAPS, and as an example buying them if they're still at the same price they were bought by the senator at.
Gys 7y ago
If historical data is available, an aggregated result of this could be compared to the S&P index. To see if their trades actually outperform and therefore if they a better traders than average, and if so, this might mean they have better info.
- systemvoltage 7y ago
  That's not guaranteed. There are number of reasons one of them being by sheer chance.
  - pathseeker 7y ago
    Yes, that's the point of measuring them. There are enough senators making enough trades over time though that there should be a clear out-performance bias if they are insider trading with much significance. The whole problem with this approach though is that a smart senate inside trader (since the STOCK act) would not do these trades him/herself. They would trade inside tips to outsiders for favors instead.
- saas_sam 7y ago
  There are many examples of sketchy investment behavior in the Federal government. I remember this one, courtesy of Nancy Pelosi and Visa. I thought I remembered her offloading $MMs of FB call options too just prior to railing against them, but I can't find an article on that one now that I'm looking. Link on Visa: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pelosi-corzine-visa-scandal/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pelosi-corzine...
  - justaguyhere 7y ago
    Then he joined MF Global Holdings and bagged a $14 million compensation package — including $2 million in guaranteed bonuses, regardless of performance. Jeez man, I can't even get a 1% raise, despite being a good worker in my team. 2M guaranteed, regardless of performance? What a sweet deal...
    - 7y ago
papeda 7y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to forbid members of congress from owning anything other than a narrow class of investments (for example homes and index funds, though I'm surely missing many). This sounds like the old "cut their pay!" argument. The rejoinder to that argument is that it should be practical for people who aren't already wealthy to hold office, and a low salary would hurt that. This is different because the hit to potential earnings from restriction to a basic generic portfolio seems small (maybe not relative to the upside from insider trading, but to what members of congress would make as average citizens). Heck, it's still possible to trade in index funds off insider information. But the advantage seems smaller.
- bmm6o 7y ago
  No need to limit asset classes, this is the problem blind trusts are designed to solve. It's the tool that anyone who wants to avoid the appearance of impropriety uses.
  - jimhefferon 7y ago
    But the current majority, at least in the Senate, seems not to need to care about the appearance of impropriety.
throw2945015 7y ago
How about making one for Congress? In 2011, "60 Minutes" reported that members of Congress could legally trade stock based on non-public information from Capitol Hill. video [0], write-up [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-insid...
- noitsnot 7y ago
  The Senate is part of Congress but The House doesn't disclose trades. The Stock Act of 2012 prohibits insider trading for the Senate and provides that trades are disclosed, which is why the data is available for that branch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
  - lotaezenwa 7y ago
    > The house doesn't disclose trades. This is not a factual statement. See the Clerk of the House of Representatives [0]. The main issue is that many of these trades are submitted by scanned, handwritten documents. [0] http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx
justaguyhere 7y ago
periodic is spelled as perodic. Very neat idea, I hope something comes out of it.
intrepidhero 7y ago
I'd like to see someone dig up all the most egregious examples of suspected insider trading here and post it in the relevant voter guides for each member's reelection.
lowercased 7y ago
the senate website source... It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report: * for any unlawful purpose; * for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public; * for determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual; or * for use, directly or indirectly, in the solicitation of money for any political, charitable, or other purpose. "...indirectly... solicitation of money... for any ... other purpose". The author of the site links to a site which takes donations. Is this a violation? I'm not suggesting he shouldn't take donations; I'm suggesting the language in the usage terms are too overly broad.
- voz_ 7y ago
  This is news and reporting.
- whatsmyusername 7y ago
  Who cares? It's obvious 'the rule of law' means nothing in 2020.
Groxx 7y ago
The "Thoughts & Prayers" button is brilliant.
nicota 7y ago
How about this one for suspected informed trading? ~40% in 2 days... https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129-4094-9D39-DEBB561EDFFF/ https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129... (you have to agree to the terms first) Unless I misunderstood something, looks like Mark Begich bought KERX stock on 01/28/2013 for 1001$-15000$, sold at 01/30/2013 for 15001$-50000$. KERX closing price on 01/28/2013 was 6.06, and 8.49 2 days later... Verified by looking at charts in https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive-chart https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive-char...
- fragsworth 7y ago
  God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. Completely unethical. Our representatives are complete and utter scumbags. Needless to say, this should be illegal. I honestly wish we could retroactively imprison them for doing this. The current state of the U.S. is so damn embarrassing and shameful. I literally cringe when I imagine internationals seeing what we do here.
  - missedthecue 7y ago
    >God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. How do you figure?
    - three_seagrass 7y ago
      A U.S. senator buys random pharma stock the day before it announces their renal drug passed a trial, and then sold immediately after announcing.
      - totalZero 7y ago
        So he traded the catalyst.
        three_seagrass 7y ago
kyleblarson 7y ago
It's sickening how all of these lifetime senators and congressmen can amass such wealth given the salaries of their elected positions.
- erentz 7y ago
  Yes this is something that needs to be looked at more. How much does their wealth grow from the time they enter to the time they exit congress. Some politicians seem to get very wealthy while in congress. “You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.”
- nightski 7y ago
  What concerns me far more is how long they can remain elected vs. any corruption that happens while elected. We needed term limits decades ago.
- blast 7y ago
  LBJ was a notorious case.
S_A_P 7y ago
My question is this- if one were to build a trading bot that bought and sold along with something like this- 1) would it be legal 2) I’m curious about the returns vs the market.
Cyberdog 7y ago
A question to people who might pay more attention to the functioning of Congress than me: Is much of their day-to-day business actually secret? If Congress is about to pass a bill which will benefit company X, can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do? Are we just mad that they're paying more attention to what they themselves are doing and how it will benefit certain companies' stocks than normal people who have better things to do with their lives than track what Congress is debating from day to day?
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
  Most of the actual negotiations do happen behind closed doors, and there are likely many times during their term when a congressperson would know of market-moving macroeconomic news before it's been publicly disclosed.
- toast0 7y ago
  > can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do? The published drafts are days behind what's being circulated; you can see this every time there's an emergency bill, it's often voted on almost simultaneously with the final text being released. Sometimes, there's a reading of the bill, if people push the right procedural buttons. Regardless, insider trading on delayed information isn't nearly as good as insider trading on current information (probably? I don't have experience with insider trading :)
  - metaphor 7y ago
    This. When npr.org has more timely, relevant information than congress.gov--e.g. S.3548[1] wholesale pivots to H.R.748[2] with significant changes incorporated, and the latter isn't updated until days later--it leaves much for the general public to desire. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3548 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/354... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748
- 7y ago
heyoni 7y ago
Ok this is really awesome. Now if you would just go ahead and create an API for this, so I can set my TD Ameritrade to trigger trades off of this information, that would be great.../s
tasty_freeze 7y ago
It would be great if (a) elected officials could hold only cash, bonds, and index funds, specifically bonds and index funds that are open the general public and have at least $XX assets, to prevent engineering an index fund available only one one or a few people. (b) pay them better to make up for the loss of gravy. Sure, the pay raise would not be sufficient to make up for the lost income, but it should be high enough that none of them could complain they can't live on the salary. Paying the senate majority leader under $200K / year is not enough, considering they often have living expenses in Washington and their home state. Lower ranking members get paid less. Pay the leader $1M/year and everyone else $500K/year and then prohibit anything but vanilla investments.
- maxcan 7y ago
  100% agree. I'd be fine with 7 or 8 figure salaries for members of congress, the president, and top executives along with very strict rules on investments: treasuries with a small allocation to broad market, long only ETFs: S&P500, MSCI World, etc.
  - Moodles 7y ago
    7/8 figures seems a bit much no?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      535 members of congress, each making $10M/year adds up to about $15/year per American.
      - Moodles 7y ago
        That seems like a lot to me though. You can make many expensive things look not that expensive if you put it in terms of “per American”. It’s just the there are many things and they all add up. E.g can’t you just pay them 1 million and use the 90% savings to buy X nurses? I don’t have any data to inform my decision on what would be the best number though so I should shut up.
totalZero 7y ago
The easy solution to this problem would be to either require Congressmen to publicly announce a transaction prior to effecting it, or to tax their capital gains heavily for transactions made outside of a predetermined window.
dragthor 7y ago
Just the Senate? What about the House?
bognition 7y ago
> It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report: for any unlawful purpose; for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public; Welp, looks like trying to actually trade on this information is illegal. Feels like a double standard.
- toyg 7y ago
  Good luck trying to prove that one traded after reading a specific website on a specific date...
yingw787 7y ago
I also remember a comparison between Barack Obama and Lee Hsien Loong. While President Obama was learning JavaScript for the first time in office, PM Lee had written a C++ sudoku solver prior to high office in addition to being Senior Wrangler (top math undergrad) in Oxford. No, hard intelligence isn't everything (in fact it's probably overvalued in most parts of our society), but it may be a reliable indicator of other character traits important for soft skills, like persistence, diligence, and thoroughness. POTUS makes $400k per year. Singapore's PM makes $2.2M / year. It's hard to avoid thinking you get what you pay for sometimes. Personally, I would be much more inclined to consider public service if salaries for government positions were competitive with the free market. If I can reliably purchase a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln quality POTUS for $300M per year, I would consider that money very well spent.
cco 7y ago
Would be really interesting to see if lawmakers outperform the market and if so, by how much, they can't all be Warren Buffet right?
iask 7y ago
I love this! Create a widget as well, perhaps one day it will be added to the senate website, or the local senators offices.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
toyg 7y ago
Feedback - in the "about" section, this sentence is broken: "Since there is no major reprecussion for insider knowledge trading for a senator or member of congress to act on the best behalf of their wallet." Either drop the "since", or replace full-stop with a comma to join the following period.
tcarambat1010 7y ago
Hey everyone, I'm the creator of this. I'm listening to everyone's comments about new features and expect them shortly! Thanks for everyone's support and appreciation.
- ghufran_syed 7y ago
  I posted elsewhere in the thread, but figured it was worth replying directly - is there any way to find out who is making their own investment decisions, and who is having their money managed in a blind trust on their behalf? The two situations are obviously very different with respect to possible abuse.
  - ghufran_syed 7y ago
    Just realized, you could get the info manually if it's not already publicly available, given that there are only 100 senator. Their offices would probably just give that info, otherwise "refused to answer" would still be useful info to put on your site next to each senator's trades.
- te 7y ago
  Nice job, I really like this and find it useful. A couple ideas I'd love to see implemented, depending on how far you want to go with this: (1) On the "top 5 traded tickers" display, just go ahead and list all the tickers and not just top 5. This will summarize the day-by-day info on the left panel. Would be nice to sort the traded tickers summary by either count or ticker. (2) So right now, we can select a date and see the reports from Senators that reported that day. Additionally, I'd like to name a Senator and see all their trades across all reports in a single screen. Finally, I'd like to click (or input) a ticker and see all reported trades for a given ticker among all Senators and all dates. Thanks again. I wasn't even aware this info was now publicly reported. A small step forward, I guess.
- jzwinck 7y ago
  I found that John Boozman does quite a lot of trading but his data is not visible on your site because he reports it only on scanned-in paper forms. Now, maybe Senator Boozman just really loves paper forms, but maybe he's one of the many people who have realized that one of the best ways to hide legally required disclosures is to make it inaccessible to automated analysis. I suggest making an annual report of which senators are filing in a way that inhibits analysis of their trades. Mr Boozman would be a star on that list, but there may be others and I think we should call them on it.
DesiLurker 7y ago
I wonder if openness of this information can lead to a senator just front running the watchers by creating 'vibes' when none exist. so they can buy a moderately in-news stock and declare it immediately. then sell it after the run up. or vice-versa with shorts. in fact they can disclose favorable news immediately and wait for 30days to disclose unloading the position till the fervor has died off.
ghufran_syed 7y ago
This would be much more useful if you could tell which senator was actually making the trading decsions, vs having trades made on their behalf in a blind trust. The situations are very different in terms of potential abuse of inside information
analog31 7y ago
I wonder how hard it would be to create a mutual fund that tracks the holdings of the senators.
crazygringo 7y ago
Fascinating site! Unfortunately -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the calendar day selected isn't the day stocks were traded, but rather reported, which can be up to 45 days after a trade? [1] E.g. today's date (Apr 10) shows trades that happened on March 9, 20, and 25. So very cool for transparency, but of zero utility for anyone trying to either duplicate a trading strategy, or trying to suss out in advance what senators know that we don't. :( [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
- stephenmc 7y ago
  So, in about 30 - 45 days time this is going to make for some VERY interesting reading..
seibelj 7y ago
I personally don’t think insider trading is a crime, as many other people don’t https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider-trading/ https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider-trading/ The more resources we spend fighting “insider trading” the more valuable people who have found loopholes or ways not to get caught. It’s a never ending losing game. I’d rather make all trades public than ban “insider” trading.
- smabie 7y ago
  I think insider trading should be a private affair: if you work at a company and steal from the company by inside trading on some announcement, well then they should probably fire you (and maybe file a civil suit). But there's certainly arguments to be made that insider trading is very good for the markets as it allows new information to get incorporated into the price very quickly.
crispinb 7y ago
I'd like something like this in Australia, targeting real estate speculation which is probably our largest single source of corruption at all governmental levels. The US polity though seems too deeply corroded for transparency to be more than a minor (albeit positive) tweak.
surfmike 7y ago
Fun fact: until the STOCK act was passed in 2012 there was nothing restricting insider trading by Congress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
gandalfian 7y ago
I always liked this study on buying presidential supporting stock. Don't know if it would work on trump but if we'd bought haliburton stock we'd all be rich... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestments.shares https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestmen...
RobKohr 7y ago
This information should be reported within 24 hrs or less of a trade rather than 45 days later to negate the insider trading aspect of the situation. It also should apply to the house and the senate.

677 points by ericmay 7y ago

vinniejames 7y ago

Where does this data come?

croshan 7y ago
From the bottom of the page: https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/ https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/home/

croshan 7y ago

The general public doesn't have great trading strategies, but Senators may be more well informed. I wonder how a bot based off of their trades would do.

neltnerb 7y ago
I suspect they're sophisticated enough to turn something like an "index fund of what the people in charge buy" into a profit by making sure the timing of the reporting makes it more profitable for them. Since the reporting isn't instantaneous, they of course also have insider knowledge of their own trades and that those trades would influence markets and when. They could screw around with the timing of trades to give misleading stories, like selling off a bunch of stuff just before they file a report and then buying it after their action tanks the price. But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a record of how well Senators do in the stock market compared to an index fund (which I believe are also run by well informed people)? That might shame them into changing the rules if it looks bad. Of course, I don't know enough to say they aren't behaving themselves. Some cases that look suspicious might, when taken as a whole with their other trades, average out and make clear that they lose money even when they have insider knowledge that they will lose money. Somehow I doubt that, but if it's truly a blind trust or an independent fund it should be true and would increase faith in our elected officials to see hard data for.
- tantalor 7y ago
  You can fix that by coupling their trades with the "index fund", so their bid/ask for X shares at price $Y is combined with some # of shares of the common fund proportional to shares held by all members. Then the trade is executed atomically and we get the same price.
- thekyle 7y ago
  > But a virtual index fund that tracked their purchases and sales to make a record of how well Senators do in the stock market I think it's kinda funny that you called a stock index as a "virtual index fund". Feels like we've come full circle.
  - neltnerb 7y ago
    Thank you! I meant in the sense that it's not a useful thing to buy, but it is funny :-)
foobarian 7y ago
I would be pretty surprised if various algo-trading houses don't already do it.

mulmen 7y ago

Would be interesting to create a senate-tracking "index" fund. Wonder how that performs against the market.

noitsnot 7y ago
I think the site is definitely a good start. I would like to see accumulated data and charting. Which stocks have been bought and sold by week or month, etc.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
I am only half joking, but I can see advertising already. "Make money the way insiders do".
mattkrause 7y ago
The STOCK Act (or Ethics in Government Act, actually) only requires reporting within 30-45 days of purchase/sale, so your fund will lag behind whatever market-moving events they're trading on.
- personjerry 7y ago
  If you copy the long term plays it could still be viable.
  - foob4r 7y ago
    You wouldn't know if it's long term. Day 1 - stock purchase Day 45 - reported Day 46 - you buy or not? Day 45 - stock sold Day 90 - reported Day 91 - you've already lost
    - personjerry 7y ago
      I mean investments that are typically long term, such as LEAPS, and as an example buying them if they're still at the same price they were bought by the senator at.

Gys 7y ago

If historical data is available, an aggregated result of this could be compared to the S&P index. To see if their trades actually outperform and therefore if they a better traders than average, and if so, this might mean they have better info.

systemvoltage 7y ago
That's not guaranteed. There are number of reasons one of them being by sheer chance.
- pathseeker 7y ago
  Yes, that's the point of measuring them. There are enough senators making enough trades over time though that there should be a clear out-performance bias if they are insider trading with much significance. The whole problem with this approach though is that a smart senate inside trader (since the STOCK act) would not do these trades him/herself. They would trade inside tips to outsiders for favors instead.
saas_sam 7y ago
There are many examples of sketchy investment behavior in the Federal government. I remember this one, courtesy of Nancy Pelosi and Visa. I thought I remembered her offloading $MMs of FB call options too just prior to railing against them, but I can't find an article on that one now that I'm looking. Link on Visa: https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pelosi-corzine-visa-scandal/ https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pelosi-corzine...
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  Then he joined MF Global Holdings and bagged a $14 million compensation package — including $2 million in guaranteed bonuses, regardless of performance. Jeez man, I can't even get a 1% raise, despite being a good worker in my team. 2M guaranteed, regardless of performance? What a sweet deal...
  - 7y ago

papeda 7y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to forbid members of congress from owning anything other than a narrow class of investments (for example homes and index funds, though I'm surely missing many). This sounds like the old "cut their pay!" argument. The rejoinder to that argument is that it should be practical for people who aren't already wealthy to hold office, and a low salary would hurt that. This is different because the hit to potential earnings from restriction to a basic generic portfolio seems small (maybe not relative to the upside from insider trading, but to what members of congress would make as average citizens). Heck, it's still possible to trade in index funds off insider information. But the advantage seems smaller.

bmm6o 7y ago
No need to limit asset classes, this is the problem blind trusts are designed to solve. It's the tool that anyone who wants to avoid the appearance of impropriety uses.
- jimhefferon 7y ago
  But the current majority, at least in the Senate, seems not to need to care about the appearance of impropriety.

throw2945015 7y ago

How about making one for Congress? In 2011, "60 Minutes" reported that members of Congress could legally trade stock based on non-public information from Capitol Hill. video [0], write-up [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zh30lm7aSQ [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-insid...

noitsnot 7y ago
The Senate is part of Congress but The House doesn't disclose trades. The Stock Act of 2012 prohibits insider trading for the Senate and provides that trades are disclosed, which is why the data is available for that branch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act
- lotaezenwa 7y ago
  > The house doesn't disclose trades. This is not a factual statement. See the Clerk of the House of Representatives [0]. The main issue is that many of these trades are submitted by scanned, handwritten documents. [0] http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx http://clerk.house.gov/public_disc/financial-search.aspx

justaguyhere 7y ago

periodic is spelled as perodic. Very neat idea, I hope something comes out of it.

intrepidhero 7y ago

I'd like to see someone dig up all the most egregious examples of suspected insider trading here and post it in the relevant voter guides for each member's reelection.

lowercased 7y ago

the senate website source... It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report: * for any unlawful purpose; * for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public; * for determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual; or * for use, directly or indirectly, in the solicitation of money for any political, charitable, or other purpose. "...indirectly... solicitation of money... for any ... other purpose". The author of the site links to a site which takes donations. Is this a violation? I'm not suggesting he shouldn't take donations; I'm suggesting the language in the usage terms are too overly broad.

voz_ 7y ago
This is news and reporting.
whatsmyusername 7y ago
Who cares? It's obvious 'the rule of law' means nothing in 2020.

Groxx 7y ago

The "Thoughts & Prayers" button is brilliant.

nicota 7y ago

How about this one for suspected informed trading? ~40% in 2 days... https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129-4094-9D39-DEBB561EDFFF/ https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/view/paper/82AAE77A-D129... (you have to agree to the terms first) Unless I misunderstood something, looks like Mark Begich bought KERX stock on 01/28/2013 for 1001$-15000$, sold at 01/30/2013 for 15001$-50000$. KERX closing price on 01/28/2013 was 6.06, and 8.49 2 days later... Verified by looking at charts in https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive-chart https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/KERX/interactive-char...

fragsworth 7y ago
God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. Completely unethical. Our representatives are complete and utter scumbags. Needless to say, this should be illegal. I honestly wish we could retroactively imprison them for doing this. The current state of the U.S. is so damn embarrassing and shameful. I literally cringe when I imagine internationals seeing what we do here.
- missedthecue 7y ago
  >God damn, there is no way this is anything other than just brazenly obvious insider trading. How do you figure?
  - three_seagrass 7y ago
    A U.S. senator buys random pharma stock the day before it announces their renal drug passed a trial, and then sold immediately after announcing.
    - totalZero 7y ago
      So he traded the catalyst.
      - three_seagrass 7y ago

kyleblarson 7y ago

It's sickening how all of these lifetime senators and congressmen can amass such wealth given the salaries of their elected positions.

erentz 7y ago
Yes this is something that needs to be looked at more. How much does their wealth grow from the time they enter to the time they exit congress. Some politicians seem to get very wealthy while in congress. “You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.”
nightski 7y ago
What concerns me far more is how long they can remain elected vs. any corruption that happens while elected. We needed term limits decades ago.
blast 7y ago
LBJ was a notorious case.

S_A_P 7y ago

My question is this- if one were to build a trading bot that bought and sold along with something like this- 1) would it be legal 2) I’m curious about the returns vs the market.

Cyberdog 7y ago

A question to people who might pay more attention to the functioning of Congress than me: Is much of their day-to-day business actually secret? If Congress is about to pass a bill which will benefit company X, can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do? Are we just mad that they're paying more attention to what they themselves are doing and how it will benefit certain companies' stocks than normal people who have better things to do with their lives than track what Congress is debating from day to day?

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 7y ago
Most of the actual negotiations do happen behind closed doors, and there are likely many times during their term when a congressperson would know of market-moving macroeconomic news before it's been publicly disclosed.
toast0 7y ago
> can't we all go on to the House or Senate web sites and read the drafts of those bills and have the same "insider information" that they do? The published drafts are days behind what's being circulated; you can see this every time there's an emergency bill, it's often voted on almost simultaneously with the final text being released. Sometimes, there's a reading of the bill, if people push the right procedural buttons. Regardless, insider trading on delayed information isn't nearly as good as insider trading on current information (probably? I don't have experience with insider trading :)
- metaphor 7y ago
  This. When npr.org has more timely, relevant information than congress.gov--e.g. S.3548[1] wholesale pivots to H.R.748[2] with significant changes incorporated, and the latter isn't updated until days later--it leaves much for the general public to desire. [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3548 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/354... [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/748
7y ago

heyoni 7y ago

Ok this is really awesome. Now if you would just go ahead and create an API for this, so I can set my TD Ameritrade to trigger trades off of this information, that would be great.../s

tasty_freeze 7y ago

It would be great if (a) elected officials could hold only cash, bonds, and index funds, specifically bonds and index funds that are open the general public and have at least $XX assets, to prevent engineering an index fund available only one one or a few people. (b) pay them better to make up for the loss of gravy. Sure, the pay raise would not be sufficient to make up for the lost income, but it should be high enough that none of them could complain they can't live on the salary. Paying the senate majority leader under $200K / year is not enough, considering they often have living expenses in Washington and their home state. Lower ranking members get paid less. Pay the leader $1M/year and everyone else $500K/year and then prohibit anything but vanilla investments.

maxcan 7y ago
100% agree. I'd be fine with 7 or 8 figure salaries for members of congress, the president, and top executives along with very strict rules on investments: treasuries with a small allocation to broad market, long only ETFs: S&P500, MSCI World, etc.
- Moodles 7y ago
  7/8 figures seems a bit much no?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    535 members of congress, each making $10M/year adds up to about $15/year per American.
    - Moodles 7y ago
      That seems like a lot to me though. You can make many expensive things look not that expensive if you put it in terms of “per American”. It’s just the there are many things and they all add up. E.g can’t you just pay them 1 million and use the 90% savings to buy X nurses? I don’t have any data to inform my decision on what would be the best number though so I should shut up.

totalZero 7y ago

The easy solution to this problem would be to either require Congressmen to publicly announce a transaction prior to effecting it, or to tax their capital gains heavily for transactions made outside of a predetermined window.

dragthor 7y ago

Just the Senate? What about the House?

bognition 7y ago

> It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report: for any unlawful purpose; for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public; Welp, looks like trying to actually trade on this information is illegal. Feels like a double standard.

toyg 7y ago
Good luck trying to prove that one traded after reading a specific website on a specific date...

yingw787 7y ago

I also remember a comparison between Barack Obama and Lee Hsien Loong. While President Obama was learning JavaScript for the first time in office, PM Lee had written a C++ sudoku solver prior to high office in addition to being Senior Wrangler (top math undergrad) in Oxford. No, hard intelligence isn't everything (in fact it's probably overvalued in most parts of our society), but it may be a reliable indicator of other character traits important for soft skills, like persistence, diligence, and thoroughness. POTUS makes $400k per year. Singapore's PM makes $2.2M / year. It's hard to avoid thinking you get what you pay for sometimes. Personally, I would be much more inclined to consider public service if salaries for government positions were competitive with the free market. If I can reliably purchase a George Washington or an Abraham Lincoln quality POTUS for $300M per year, I would consider that money very well spent.

cco 7y ago

Would be really interesting to see if lawmakers outperform the market and if so, by how much, they can't all be Warren Buffet right?

iask 7y ago

I love this! Create a widget as well, perhaps one day it will be added to the senate website, or the local senators offices.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

toyg 7y ago

Feedback - in the "about" section, this sentence is broken: "Since there is no major reprecussion for insider knowledge trading for a senator or member of congress to act on the best behalf of their wallet." Either drop the "since", or replace full-stop with a comma to join the following period.

tcarambat1010 7y ago

Hey everyone, I'm the creator of this. I'm listening to everyone's comments about new features and expect them shortly! Thanks for everyone's support and appreciation.

ghufran_syed 7y ago
I posted elsewhere in the thread, but figured it was worth replying directly - is there any way to find out who is making their own investment decisions, and who is having their money managed in a blind trust on their behalf? The two situations are obviously very different with respect to possible abuse.
- ghufran_syed 7y ago
  Just realized, you could get the info manually if it's not already publicly available, given that there are only 100 senator. Their offices would probably just give that info, otherwise "refused to answer" would still be useful info to put on your site next to each senator's trades.
te 7y ago
Nice job, I really like this and find it useful. A couple ideas I'd love to see implemented, depending on how far you want to go with this: (1) On the "top 5 traded tickers" display, just go ahead and list all the tickers and not just top 5. This will summarize the day-by-day info on the left panel. Would be nice to sort the traded tickers summary by either count or ticker. (2) So right now, we can select a date and see the reports from Senators that reported that day. Additionally, I'd like to name a Senator and see all their trades across all reports in a single screen. Finally, I'd like to click (or input) a ticker and see all reported trades for a given ticker among all Senators and all dates. Thanks again. I wasn't even aware this info was now publicly reported. A small step forward, I guess.
jzwinck 7y ago
I found that John Boozman does quite a lot of trading but his data is not visible on your site because he reports it only on scanned-in paper forms. Now, maybe Senator Boozman just really loves paper forms, but maybe he's one of the many people who have realized that one of the best ways to hide legally required disclosures is to make it inaccessible to automated analysis. I suggest making an annual report of which senators are filing in a way that inhibits analysis of their trades. Mr Boozman would be a star on that list, but there may be others and I think we should call them on it.

DesiLurker 7y ago

I wonder if openness of this information can lead to a senator just front running the watchers by creating 'vibes' when none exist. so they can buy a moderately in-news stock and declare it immediately. then sell it after the run up. or vice-versa with shorts. in fact they can disclose favorable news immediately and wait for 30days to disclose unloading the position till the fervor has died off.

ghufran_syed 7y ago

This would be much more useful if you could tell which senator was actually making the trading decsions, vs having trades made on their behalf in a blind trust. The situations are very different in terms of potential abuse of inside information

analog31 7y ago

I wonder how hard it would be to create a mutual fund that tracks the holdings of the senators.

crazygringo 7y ago

Fascinating site! Unfortunately -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the calendar day selected isn't the day stocks were traded, but rather reported, which can be up to 45 days after a trade? [1] E.g. today's date (Apr 10) shows trades that happened on March 9, 20, and 25. So very cool for transparency, but of zero utility for anyone trying to either duplicate a trading strategy, or trying to suss out in advance what senators know that we don't. :( [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act

stephenmc 7y ago
So, in about 30 - 45 days time this is going to make for some VERY interesting reading..

seibelj 7y ago

I personally don’t think insider trading is a crime, as many other people don’t https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider-trading/ https://reason.com/2012/11/28/legalize-insider-trading/ The more resources we spend fighting “insider trading” the more valuable people who have found loopholes or ways not to get caught. It’s a never ending losing game. I’d rather make all trades public than ban “insider” trading.

smabie 7y ago
I think insider trading should be a private affair: if you work at a company and steal from the company by inside trading on some announcement, well then they should probably fire you (and maybe file a civil suit). But there's certainly arguments to be made that insider trading is very good for the markets as it allows new information to get incorporated into the price very quickly.

crispinb 7y ago

I'd like something like this in Australia, targeting real estate speculation which is probably our largest single source of corruption at all governmental levels. The US polity though seems too deeply corroded for transparency to be more than a minor (albeit positive) tweak.

surfmike 7y ago

Fun fact: until the STOCK act was passed in 2012 there was nothing restricting insider trading by Congress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOCK_Act

gandalfian 7y ago

I always liked this study on buying presidential supporting stock. Don't know if it would work on trump but if we'd bought haliburton stock we'd all be rich... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestments.shares https://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/mar/08/moneyinvestmen...

RobKohr 7y ago

This information should be reported within 24 hrs or less of a trade rather than 45 days later to negate the insider trading aspect of the situation. It also should apply to the house and the senate.