3 ms·

Pelosi is famous for her trading activity, but I always wonder why there isn't _more_ of this. Is congress constrained by their own sense of propriety, or have

by mkmk 3y ago

Pelosi is famous for her trading activity, but I always wonder why there isn't _more_ of this. Is congress constrained by their own sense of propriety, or have they reached the theoretical maximum alpha from their insider knowledge?

mulmen 3y ago
How much of this is insider knowledge and how much is just that congress tends to attract wealthy people who are already making these kinds of trades?
- mkmk 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1742207287966777673 https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/174220728796677767... Judge for yourself – the data is public.
  - mulmen 3y ago
    Not enough information in that Tweet. Is outperforming SPY abnormal among non-congressional peers? Here’s the actual report: https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-trading-report-2023 https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-trading-... From the tl;dr: > Congress beat the market, once again. Of 100 trading members, 33% beat SPY with their portfolios. So 2/3 of congressional traders underperform SPY. This also means the image in the tweet only shows top performers. From later in the analysis: > Note that there are a total of 535 Members of Congress, with 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House. If congress has such useful information for trading why is only 1/5th of congress trading? This 20% is roughly on par with the 15% of the American public directly owning stock.
    - mkmk 3y ago
      Yeah, so coming back to my initial question – I wonder why there isn't more successful insider trading by congresspeople.
      - mulmen 3y ago
        Maybe they don’t have actionable information. Based on what I have seen here there’s no evidence of insider trading in congress. Of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Congress looks a lot like the general population by these numbers. About 20% are active in the market and of that 20% most of them don’t beat it. I’m less concerned with them having non-public information and more concerned with conflicts of interest. If they own Chevron will they still be inclined to pass that EV subsidy?

by mkmk 3y ago

mulmen 3y ago

How much of this is insider knowledge and how much is just that congress tends to attract wealthy people who are already making these kinds of trades?

mkmk 3y ago
https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1742207287966777673 https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/174220728796677767... Judge for yourself – the data is public.
- mulmen 3y ago
  Not enough information in that Tweet. Is outperforming SPY abnormal among non-congressional peers? Here’s the actual report: https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-trading-report-2023 https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-trading-... From the tl;dr: > Congress beat the market, once again. Of 100 trading members, 33% beat SPY with their portfolios. So 2/3 of congressional traders underperform SPY. This also means the image in the tweet only shows top performers. From later in the analysis: > Note that there are a total of 535 Members of Congress, with 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House. If congress has such useful information for trading why is only 1/5th of congress trading? This 20% is roughly on par with the 15% of the American public directly owning stock.
  - mkmk 3y ago
    Yeah, so coming back to my initial question – I wonder why there isn't more successful insider trading by congresspeople.
    - mulmen 3y ago
      Maybe they don’t have actionable information. Based on what I have seen here there’s no evidence of insider trading in congress. Of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Congress looks a lot like the general population by these numbers. About 20% are active in the market and of that 20% most of them don’t beat it. I’m less concerned with them having non-public information and more concerned with conflicts of interest. If they own Chevron will they still be inclined to pass that EV subsidy?