> Even a hundred dollars is enough to make people feel an irrational protective attachment to the company. But anyone with stock investments at this scale is a

> Even a hundred dollars is enough to make people feel an irrational protective attachment to the company. But anyone with stock investments at this scale is already seeing their portfolio swing a couple hundred dollars on the regular. Regulators also have far more to lose in their career (paying potentially millions over the multi-year course of their tenure) by making the wrong decision than they would by swinging their portfolio a couple hundred bucks on a given day. We can't realistically demand that all public regulators abstain from investing in, for example, an S&P 500 index fund that holds several percent of Apple stock. If the job came with a requirement that the job holder couldn't invest standard index funds, anyone who knows anything about investing and financial planning would avoid the job at all costs. There has to be a compromise. You can't demand absolute zero financial interest in things like index funds over the mere chance that someone might make an irrational career-harming move to swing their portfolio a couple hundred bucks.