26 ms·
“Captain Gains” on Capitol Hill
- mahatofu 11mo agoHow does one find out what stocks each Rep owns?
- burkaman 11mo agohttps://unusualwhales.com/portfolios/pro-congress-etf https://unusualwhales.com/portfolios/pro-congress-etf
- stego-tech 11mo agoUnusual Whales keeps track of Congressional disclosures and even built ETFs around each party’s picks: https://unusualwhales.com/politics https://unusualwhales.com/politics It’s absolutely disgusting that this sort of Insider Trading has been allowed to continue unchecked, and a significant contributor to the normalization of American corruption and its associated regulatory capture.
- andsoitis 11mo agoSee https://www.investopedia.com/how-to-find-lawmaker-investments-11753849 https://www.investopedia.com/how-to-find-lawmaker-investment... for the official disclosure portals, as well as some unofficial trackers.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- showerst 11mo agoThey have to fill out a disclosure form, but it's on a 30 day delay, often more because they file late. Be wary of all the third party congressional stock trackers for this reason.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- threatofrain 11mo agoBy the time you factor in the information you're too late.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- derrida 11mo agoAsk one of them to lunch, slip them an envelope.
- burkaman 11mo agoIncorrect title, the finding is "lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension." This is saying that people in congressional leadership positions do 47% better than other members of Congress.
- exasperaited 11mo agoThe more committees you are on, the more opportunities you have for informed medium term trading that escapes insider-dealing scrutiny. It's a fundamental problem with government and it is why politicians should be required to put their stocks in a blind trust. But it still doesn't solve the problem of blind trusts not being truly blind when you know what went into them.
- embedding-shape 11mo ago> it is why politicians should be required to put their stocks in a blind trust Don't these people get a salary already? If "serving the people" isn't enough as an incentive, maybe they shouldn't be in a position for serving the people? Outlaw politicians owning stocks at all, it makes no sense they ever could in the first place, when the incentives are so obviously misaligned. It simply lives too much room for misbehaving actors, no matter how much bandage you put on top.
- _heimdall 11mo agoIt makes more sense when the government isn't as powerful as it is today. If we didn't ask or expect our governments to do so much the politicians would have much less advantage over the average person.
- bluGill 11mo agoI don't want people in congress as a career. Do it for at most 2 terms and get back to the real world. When that is the reality it means we cannot take away their ability to have stocks because when they return "to the real world" they will need that savings. Though while in office they should be limited to buying and selling from blind trusts and such things where they cannot know what happens except the economy in general. However if they own stock before it isn't fair to make them sell it: this is a really hard problem and there probably isn't an answer I will be happy with.
- bilekas 11mo agoIt must be just down to the fact that they're so intelligent and tuned into the world that they know where to invest. Nothing to see here folks, move along now. I would say jokes aside but the political system promotes this corruption.
- the__alchemist 11mo agoCorruption and unfair election systems are one of the clearest bipartisan embarrassments. I can't understand why this gets overshadowed by wedges. Maybe the media benefits from it?
- daveguy 11mo agoThe election systems are managed at the state level exactly as they should be. Corruption has a much lower chance when there are barriers. That said, there should be national minimum standards for the elections. Chain of custody is something all elections adhere to in the US, but if it's not a federal requirement, it should be. What's really needed are hand marked paper ballots, electronically counted using open, independently audited machines with no network connectivity (obviously). "Scantron" style machines That should be a minimum requirement. Nobody stole the election from the doddering old fool in 2020. Internet bullshit doesn't stand up in court where they do have evidence standards. Edit: Back on topic ... individual stock trading by representatives clearly should be illegal. And apparently we need more independent watchdogs with better protections against a puppet who mindlessly goes along with the last person to manipulate them.
- bilbo0s 11mo ago>Maybe the media benefits from it? Nah. We just love our dog whistles. Abortion!! Immigrants!! The billionaires are stealing from you!! Libtards!! Right wing shooters!! Oh yeah, almost forgot.. Something, something blacks!!! That's how you win elections these days. You can try to win an election on something substantive, say, infrastructure repair and updates for instance. But the wedge issue fueled campaigns are gonna wipe the floor with you. We the people have voted on this over and over. The data is irrefutable. We love our wedge issues.
- sebtron 11mo agoAh yes that must be perfectly legal and a sign of a healthy democracy.
- Simulacra 11mo agoMy boss has invested in a fund that tracks Nancy Pelosi's stock trades for years, and he's made quite a profit. I wish I could do that.
- bell-cot 11mo agoWhat's the barrier? Is the fund closed to new investors, or does it require a very large initial investment and/or years of "exemplary donations" to the Democratic party?
- ta12653421 11mo agoNANC
- tekla 11mo agoNothing. Its performance is kinda meh.
- fblp 11mo agoyep also curious about this!
- ta12653421 11mo agoNANC
- ta12653421 11mo agoyou can do that, if you are in the US? Ticker: NANC, its an ETF
- lotsofpulp 11mo agoNominal returns are only 11% more compared to a riskless VOO for the past 5 years. But NANC expense ratio is 0.74% per year while VOO is 0.03% per year. Every year, NANC would have to return an additional 0.7% just to break even with VOO, not accounting for the additional risk. So we're looking at 11% - 3.5% = 7.5% real return over 5 years, or roughly 1.5% per year. I'll easily recommend passing on this one. https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/NANC/VOO https://portfolioslab.com/tools/stock-comparison/NANC/VOO
- boringg 11mo agoIts funny -- out of all the corruption you see from Washington this one seems the most benign. For whatever reason this one gets almost the most constant press. Maybe because its the easiest to fix but isn't.
- exasperaited 11mo agoThis is so far from benign.
- kortilla 11mo agoWell it’s pretty benign if they aren’t making different decisions on laws based on existing holdings. That’s just insider trading which is a tax on the shareholders. Bribery or anything else that affects their lawmaking decisions is significantly worse because the impact is so much larger.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agoIf. But there is a third option: They are making decisions based on what will move something the most - doesn't matter what, and doesn't matter which way, and doesn't matter for how long. Then they invest in that thing a bit before the decision becomes public that moves that thing.
- clevergadget 11mo agoif they are actively avoiding making decisions based on how it would directly impact them? o,O
- myrmidon 11mo agoHow can you be certain that policymakers won't make decisions that help their trading instead of their constituents? The incentive is already there, and the whole thing is legal, too. Don't get me wrong, I think campaign donations or even more explicit bribes are a huge problem, too, but it is already insane to me that you would ban and prosecute "ordinary insider traders" and just let lawmakers do whatever. If presidents have to give up peanut farming, then asking for congressmembers to be utterly decoupled from stock trading decisions is only fair and sensible in my view.
- slibhb 11mo agoDespite Congress' general dysfunction, this seems like a problem that could feasibly be solved. It would make most Congressmen of both parties look good to pass a bill that e.g. restricted sitting members to index funds/mutual funds/etc.
- Mistletoe 11mo agoEven that is open to massive bias. Who would vote to curtail the 7 tech giants when their own portfolio is basically the SP500 those companies dominate?
- bradhilton 11mo agoThe SP500 is probably the most popular investment in America, perhaps aside from housing. Wouldn't hurt to have lawmaker's fortunes broadly aligned versus narrowly aligned with specific corporations.
- Mistletoe 11mo agoThat can go very poorly like in 1929, 1965, 2000, etc. and it is going to go poorly again and show everyone why it is a bad idea. https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-reversion.php https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
- throwaway2037 11mo agoWhenever the S&P 500 craters, it is the best time to buy. Warren Buffet talks about it all the time: "Don't bet against America." There is no other large rich nation on Earth with such a dynamic economy. That (partly) explains why the US can bounce back so quickly (compared to other countries) from devastating economic downturns.
- butlike 11mo agoA new "boutique" mutual/ETF would spin up overnight which included just the assets already being insider traded.
- SeanDav 11mo agoRight, no insider trading going on here at all /s
- hypeatei 11mo agoI think the solution is to pay them more, create very strict laws around insider trading, and enforce those laws vigorously. I don't know if that's realistic or not as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to vote their representatives out for doing it and it's unlikely that current members would restrict their earnings. I guess it's good that we know about it, at least.
- someguyiguess 11mo agoSomehow I don’t think paying them more is going to be a very popular idea among the citizenry.
- tokai 11mo agoIt also wouldn't help anything.
- esafak 11mo agoNot unless you combine it with outlawing trading for them.
- jobs_throwaway 11mo agoYes it would. It'd make Congress a viable career path for ambitious-but-not-yet-wealthy people. Currently, you have to already be rich to be able to make it work. Public service should be a viable path to wealth for ambitious, capable young people.
- throwaway2037 11mo agoThere are lots of members of Congress who are not wealthy. (The senate is another story.) AOC was broke the first time that she won a seat.
- dr_dshiv 11mo agoThey should benchmark to early USA and Singapore and corporations. George Washington was paid 4x Trump, I believe. In the context of corruption cleanup, I think people understand that paying people well avoids corruption. Mexican cops, that sort of thing. Yes, not popular, but important.
- james_marks 11mo agoUnpopular opinion, but couldn’t this be explained by something as innocent as seeing what changes are likely to be coming? By having lawmakers as peers, you’d have a natural feel for what laws have momentum, who would benefit, etc. I’m not ruling out corruption, just that assuming malicious intent often masks underlying dynamics.
- someguyiguess 11mo ago“Seeing what changes are coming” is insider information.
- chrisweekly 11mo agoExactly. The corruption is systemic and structural, rather than individuals' moral failings. (Though of course there's plenty of the latter, too.)
- kortilla 11mo agoThat’s not insider information following the legal definition in the US. That’s why people want to make special laws to prevent this. It’s not insider information to buy or short a stock knowing you’re about to do something that will impact a company.
- tedggh 11mo agoGeniuses.
- commiepatrol 11mo agoIs there like a TL;DR of what I should do to also get 47% better? Happy to copy someone's profile
- clevergadget 11mo agohey and if we all do it we could all get 47% more!
- trentnix 11mo agoEvery single one of these scoundrels will stand up at a college graduation and exhort the virtues of public service and sacrifice for country. But somehow they all manage to get rich in the midst of their own service and sacrifice. They shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks. When you do so, corruption is inevitable. It should be an expected price of public service that you remove yourself from most other ambitions. I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their (rapidly depreciating) savings and income, like most Americans, they might consider some of their legislative choices differently.
- Aurornis 11mo ago> It should be an expected price of public service that you remove yourself from most other ambitions. Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you pay public servants very well you can attract high quality people to government jobs. If you make part of the job requirements that you sacrifice your retirement and financial well being for the good of the country you’re just targeting a type of politician you wish existed, not real people. > I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their (rapidly depreciating) savings and income The problem with your line of thinking is that “they” is not a fixed set of candidates. If you forced them to have “rapidly depreciating” financial states to take the job, you’d lose a lot of candidates. I know you’d like to imagine they’d be replaced by perfect utopian candidates who only have your best interests in mind, but in reality if you make people financially desperate they’re actually more likely to look for ways to commit fraud for self-benefit. Imagine the desperate lawmaker watching their family’s retirement “rapidly depreciate” who gets a visit from a lobbyist who can get their kid a sweet $200K/yr do-nothing job if they can just slip a little amendment into a law. The populist movement to punish lawmakers is self-defeating.
- ekianjo 11mo ago> Countries like Singapore already figured out that if you pay public servants very well So insider trading is not a thing among Singapore's ruling class?
- 11mo ago
- VikingCoder 11mo agoCan I find one of these people in congressional leadership positions, who is willing to accept a sizeable campaign contribution in exchange for joining their mailing list which contains their list of stock purchases in real time? Or is that one of those, "Of course that exists, but if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it" kind of things?
- a4isms 11mo agoIt is not illegal for them to trade on their inside information. It is illegal for you to trade on their inside information. So they can send you their stock picks list and gloat about their ROI, but if you invest on the basis of the newsletter, you go to jail. Wilhoit was right about everything: America is in-groups who are protected by the law, but not bound by it. Alongside out-groups who are bound by the law, but not protected by it. You and I? An out-group. And it although we make a lot of jokes about leopards ripping faces off, MAGA know they're an out-group too, it's just that as long as somebody else is getting it worse, they're fine with that.
- VikingCoder 11mo agoI've seen those empathy circles, where liberals care more about people on the fringe of society, and conservatives care more about people in the middle of society (apologies, if I'm butchering the explanation.) I'm curious, has anyone done schadenfreude circles, where they measure how much people enjoy watching someone else suffer? I mean, of course they have, that's why we have TV shows like Cops and Jerry Springer, right?
- randomtoast 11mo ago> It is not illegal for them to trade on their inside information. It is illegal for you to trade on their inside information. So they can send you their stock picks list and gloat about their ROI, but if you invest on the basis of the newsletter, you go to jail. All the Congress member trades are public. There are even ETFs now that track the Congress member trades. So you can just buy such an ETF and have a one-to-one replication of the Congress member portfolio.
- stackedinserter 11mo agoGreat, so I can copycat their portfolio and do 47 pts better.
- bradhilton 11mo agoThe problem is that they have a lot of time to report their purchases. If they were required to report before they purchased the problem would probably resolve itself.
- WaitWaitWha 11mo agoAnyone seen similar research at least the same depth for other countries?
- regnull 11mo agoJust to be fair, they compare every congressperson who becomes a leader with a “regular” (non-leader) congressperson who entered Congress in the same year and is from the same political party. Alternative view: people who becomes leaders are just more capable and better at selecting stocks?
- fjni 11mo ago> we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension If what you’re positing were true wouldn’t they have outperformed their peers before ascension as well
- mdavidn 11mo agoThe very first sentence of the linked article contradicts your alternative theory. These leaders performed similarly to their peers before ascending to leadership.
- Havoc 11mo agoBetween this and the comical definitely not corruption lobbying system it’s pretty hard to take any of it seriously
- booleandilemma 11mo agoPoliticians shouldn't be allowed to own private property. Only the people that really, really want to see a better future for their country will get involved in politics. This isn't my idea by the way, it's Plato's. Right now the people entering politics are people who just want more money. They don't care about anything or anyone else. The sooner Americans realize this the better off we'll be.
- jimbohn 11mo agoI'd rather politicians have no privacy as long as they are in office, i.e. all their communications, acquisitions, etc. should be hard-monitored, automatically sent to an anti-corruption office and perhaps public. The loss would be temporary and harder to skim around, imo it's just better incentives all around. But I'd definitely be okay with the property part if removing privacy isn't feasible :)
- tboyd47 11mo agoWho's more of an insider than the person who writes the rules of business?
- jjtheblunt 11mo agothe congresspeople on the house arms and means committees who approve massive defense budget spending to companies X and Y, then buy shares in X and Y before the spending approvals are public? (another post pointed out you can track all this at https://quiverquant.com https://quiverquant.com)
- danirogerc 11mo ago/ pelositracker
- hermannj314 11mo agoThe one thing that stirs the hearts and minds of the American people is a 67 page deep dive statistical analysis of an issue. If only Congress and Americans had access to more figures and math, then we would do the right thing. This paper is going to change things. We finally did it.
- tencentshill 11mo agoThis is a primary source. Journalists can now read (low-quality ones will use AI summaries) this information and dramatize, cut up and cherry-pick as necessary to get their readers to care.
- anovikov 11mo agoIndeed the very foundational idea of Republican system ("no titles of nobility") makes this inevitable. It doesn't happen on similar scale in Europe simply because our stocks are shit and can't be profited much in any case, politicians just make money on bribes and kickbacks.
- nathan_compton 11mo agoExtremely weird take. I can see why this system tends towards this kind of corruption but what do titles do except make the system even more profoundly corrupt?
- anovikov 11mo agoBecause people with titles of nobility were forbidden from participating in business at the risk of losing their titles; projecting to modern era, they'd be also forbidden from owning stocks at all. They must derive their means of existence from land rents and public/military service. Pretext was that engaging in commerce or business was "dishonourable" and below their status, in practice, it was a useful tool to avoid conflict of interest. To think of it, there's something tempting in physically separating owning class from ruling class, isn't it?
- nathan_compton 11mo agoI find all this rather flaccid, frankly. While the advent of capitalism provided an avenue for non-titled people to become wealthy, a lot of titled people also took that opportunity and I would guess a lot of generational wealth today still finds its ultimate source in entitled people. In any case, I doubt society could successfully enforce this behavior in a contemporary context.
- burkaman 11mo ago> people with titles of nobility were forbidden from participating in business at the risk of losing their titles I had never heard of this so I tried to look into it, here's a starting point for anyone else curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rogeance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rogeance. It seems like this was true in some countries, like France, but not all, and where they did exist these restrictions were beginning to fall in the 18th century. Projecting to the modern era, it seems obvious that a societal ruling class would not voluntarily block themselves from the center of power and make themselves irrelevant. Commercial restrictions made sense to them when the main mechanism of gaining power was acquiring and holding land, but they stopped restricting themselves once commercial activities became more important. > it was a useful tool to avoid conflict of interest I couldn't find any evidence for this and I find it pretty hard to believe. I don't even think the concept of "avoiding conflicts of interest" would make sense to historic nobility. Their interest was ruling over others, what would be the conflict in amassing wealth to expand their rule? Edit: For a literal example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose_Duchy_Organic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitrose_Duchy_Organic. This is a fairly successful company created by King Charles when he was the Duke of Cornwall, and is still owned by the current Duke. And obviously modern British royalty do own stocks, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_family#Private_estate_of_the_Sovereign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_..., and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_family#Lobbying_and_legal_exemptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_the_British_royal_.... These are immense conflicts of interest that nobody seems to be in a hurry to resolve.
- ajaimk 11mo agoMy personal opinion is that Nancy Pelosi is an anomaly in the dataset. Her husband is a VC/stock trader.
- complianceowl 11mo agoLook, I have my political views, but this is why the whole divide and conquer thing is 100% true. As long as we, whether left or right, allow our entire mind and emotions to be warped and subverted by those in power, we will never effect change and unite against this kind of corruption, which none of us stand for. It doesn't require us to change our views on areas where we don't agree. It simply requires uniting on the numerous areas where there is common ground. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this. Your average Joe does this and gets ripped away from his family for 10-years. Politicians do it and it gives them job security. The two-party system amounts to two wings on the same bird. While we're fighting about left vs. right, we're soon going to find ourselves in a new system of lords vs. peasants.
- amavect 11mo agoWe need to change the voting system in order to dissolve the two party system, per Duverger's law. Ranked choice voting will not work. Approval voting or STAR voting would work. https://www.equal.vote/ https://www.equal.vote/
- complianceowl 11mo agoTotally agree. I haven't looked into that before, but taking a look now. Thank you for including that link.
- amavect 11mo agoYou're welcome. Here's also a video on simulating plurality, RCV, and approval voting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhO6jfHPFQU
- johnohara 11mo agoIt's been five years since key lawmakers deftly navigated the market implications of covid-19 after being briefed in a closed-door session [0]. It's one thing to use insider information, it's another to be blatant and unapologetic. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_trading_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
- NickC25 11mo agoMaybe a better solution is to crowdfund someone to run for federal office under the guise of purposeful naked corruption. Their whole platform will be "I'm doing this so I can get access to information before the market does, and I will immediately disclose that information to my constituents, and provide realtime trading updates". I'd vote for that person in a heartbeat even if the rest of their platform was non-existent.
- gaudystead 11mo agoWho knows? That may have already been an angle somebody campaigned on, but only behind closed doors and to particularly generous campaign donors...
- tastyfreeze 11mo agoThey would need quite the bankroll. The most powerful congressional committees are pay to play and lobbyists usually foot the bill to get their guy on a committee.
- alsetmusic 11mo agoI want to see Nancy Pelosi in jail for insider trading the same as I want to see Trump in jail for inciting insurrection. It's ridiculous that we have as many signs of insider trading as we have and yet we do nothing about it. In a proper system, there'd be an investigation and we'd have proof and we'd do something about it. I think if you asked average USA citizens, the majority would support more restrictions, or an outright ban on trading, for the legislature. But our country isn't even pretend-run according to the will of the people at this point. The veneer of listening to the people is practically completely gone. I remember writing to one of my reps about a decade ago, urging that she vote a particular way on an issue. The canned auto-reply that I got in response told me why she was right to take the opposite stance and didn't even pretend to value my feedback. It used to be part of the job that a politician would lie to you and say they valued your opinion, even if we all knew that was bs. It was a real mask-off moment that I didn't realize was about to become the norm throughout our country.
- FridayoLeary 11mo ago[flagged]
- Workaccount2 11mo agoI'm not sure what to make of this study, and their wording is careful: "After ascension, however, leaders outperform their matched peers by up to 47 percentage points per year" They looked at the 20 congressional leaders from 1995 to 2021 that traded stocks. They found _up to_ a 47% outperformacnce per year. It's not clear (without trudging through the data) what the average outperformance was (or if there was any).
- Traubenfuchs 11mo agoThe majority of people with insider knowledge that are trading stocks will either use their knowledge to increase their gains or will tell their close friends and family. Anyone who disagrees must be new to humanity.
- josefritzishere 11mo agoHow is insider trading only 47% better. Knowing what they know... I'd do way better than that.
- jmyeet 11mo agoImagine my shocked Pikachu face. We're now at the point where the most accurate predictor of what the administration and Congress will do comes from stock trades. You want to predict a land war in Venezuela? Just watch defense contractor and energy stocks. We should force all elected officials and senior public servants to put their assets into a blind trust for their entire term plus two years. They should be forbidden from investing directly. So should their immediate family. But the problem is so much larger than that. The government as a whole is captured by the donor class. It's so well known that even without an explicit quid pro quo, you and your immediate family will be looked after if you play ball. Vote for tax cuts, deregulation or th einterests of some industry and after your political career, you will have a nice 6 or 7 figure job for life. So will your spouse and children. What brought the most recent government shutdown to an end? The evidence points to politicals who were beholden to the aviation industry. The disruption to air travel was really starting to bite. Tim Kaine in particular. But it's not just one guy. Chuck Schumer whipped votes to end the shutdown and subbed out John Ossoff who would otherwise face backlack in 2026. Every single Senator who "broke ranks" is either retiring or won't face a primary until 2028 or 2030. That's not an accident and many of them are highly funded by the commericial aviation industry. What's depressing is how little money it takes to buy our government.
- yread 11mo agoSo... where is the index that tracks their investments, so that we can also profit off their wisdom and foresight?
- SunshineTheCat 11mo agoUnrelated: Nancy Pelosi made $130M in stock profits during Congress career — a return of 16,930% https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/nancy-pelosi-made-130-million-in-stock-profits-in-her-37-years-in-congress-a-profit-of-16930/ https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/nancy-pelosi-made-130-...
- gereshes 11mo ago"Our baseline finding is that both congressional leaders in their pre-leadership years and their matched 'regular' members underperform the benchmark by similar magnitudes" "Earlier studies of lawmakers’ trading by Ziobrowski et al. (2004 and 2011), found their portfolios to outperform the market. However, this conclusion is reversed in later studies. In particular, Eggers and Hainmueller (2013) and Belmont et al. (2022) document the opposite—members of Congress underperform the market during 2004-2008 and 2012-2020, respectively." I guess the title of "Congress members suck at trading stocks, but suck less once in leadership positions" was already taken
- arnonejoe 11mo agoI think you can see the actual numbers on capitol trades. https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians
- BurningFrog 11mo agoThe discussion here seems to assume that insider trading is the only corrupting influence on politicians. But there are many other interests that heavily influence politicians. For example, in many districts you can not get elected without the endorsement of certain unions.
- giancarlostoro 11mo ago> in many districts you can not get elected without the endorsement of certain unions. It bewilders me that people vote whatever a Union says.
- vkou 11mo agoAnd in many districts you can't get elected without the endorsement of your local megachurch, but given how rarely that is complained about, Americans have a unique hatred of worker unions getting involved in politics. (Businesses, billionaires, religious groups are perfectly fine.)
- canucktrash669 11mo agoMany people mention unusualwhales.com to follow lawmakers's holdings. Do you get insights early enough or is it too late to turn a profit? Anyone knows how they get the data?
- giancarlostoro 11mo agoNot sure but there used to be a Nancy Pelosi tracker account on Twitter, and they would follow those trades, person made a bit of money, nowhere near what Nancy's estate has made though.
- jonfw 11mo agoThey have 30 days to disclose trades. Even with that massive limitation, the NANC fund that tracks pelosi does well- https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/etf/nanc/advanced-charting?timeframe=6m https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/etf/nanc/advanced-cha...
- canucktrash669 11mo agoNeither of them tracks leaders. They just say: "This fund, which we like to refer to by its trade ticker, “[NANC/GOP],” invests in equity securities purchased or sold by [Democratic/Republican] members of Congress and their spouses https://subversiveetfs.com/nanc/ https://subversiveetfs.com/nanc/ https://subversiveetfs.com/gop/ https://subversiveetfs.com/gop/ So far my YTD is right in their range. But if leaders have a 47% edge, then I'm interested.
- crest 11mo agoSo make all congressional stock traded public information in realtime?
- whatever1 11mo agoJust make their trades public in real time. Their alpha will evaporate
- charlieyu1 11mo agoWe have seen the opposite in crypto recently. Celebrity buys something and then people followed drives up the price like crazy
- Aboutplants 11mo agoProposal : A congressman can trade to their hearts content but must publicize their intentions to purchase or sell a stock with a minimum of at least 24 hours. This gives the public the open view of their intentions however they come to that decision, but the open market can then decide how to react to the congressman’s decision before they actually finalize a trade.
- torginus 11mo agoAlthough this sounds like a sensible idea, I think it's impossible to prevent insider trading - if you introduce a rule like this, politicians will just find a middle man or work around it in some other way - the corruption schemes getting more elaborate is the last thing you want.
- margalabargala 11mo agoThe goal isn't to make it impossible to do insider trading, it's to set some controls and have consequences when they aren't followed. The middle man scheme you mention would be illegal under OP's idea. So prosecute everyone involved. The more people involved, the harder to hide it. Your argument is basically "it doesn't make sense to have murder be illegal because the law won't prevent the bullet from flying."
- octoberfranklin 11mo agoYeah, unfortunately. This is pervasive in China; the politicians kid is the middleman. One child policy, so there's at most one kid -- makes it easy to know who to give the stock tips to.
- hrimfaxi 11mo agoThat should make it incredibly easy to weed out then, surely?
- expedition32 11mo agoCorruption is not weeded out because no matter how much people complain they WANT the corruption. Bernie Sanders is not the president of the United States.
- FuriouslyAdrift 11mo agoObligatory Unusual Whales mention... https://unusualwhales.com/politics/profile/Nancy%20Pelosi https://unusualwhales.com/politics/profile/Nancy%20Pelosi
- Whatarethese 11mo agoThey should not have this ability. They can invest all they want into ETFs but nothing specific. This is such absolute bullshit. Run for congress and leave with generational wealth. Pisses me off.
- DrNosferatu 11mo agoIsn't there a fund indexed to their portfolios?
- LogicFailsMe 11mo agoIn other news, cats vote down popular House of Mice measure to bell themselves unanimously. And before anyone mentions she whose name is nauseatingly always mentioned on this subject, here's the list of Congress members by net worth so you get the whole picture instead of just how bad the situation has become. Because in the end, the mice keep voting the same cats back in. https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/ https://www.quiverquant.com/congress-live-net-worth/
- tronicjester 11mo agoThe USA has a Constitution that allows and historically demands a massive expansion of Representation in the House, Senate and Court. We need 6500 House, 1000 Senate Reps, 99 Justices and 1 alternating Chief, with 25 new states.
- intalentive 11mo agoThe assumption is that the stock picks come from insider knowledge gleaned from congressional duties like sitting on committees. Another possibility is that they are a form of off-the-books campaign donation or bribe, and the knowledge comes straight from an insider who wants to influence congressional decision making.
- tronicjester 11mo agoIts almost as if private encrypted chat networks are a thing. Oh, look at that, Mets owner, Steve Cohen paid record fine for insider trading using just that.
- throwaway2037 11mo agoI'm not here to shill for Steve Cohen, but I believe that many long/short (fundamental) hedge funds use an "onion strategy" to share insider information from analyst to trader. It's probably defamation to write this, but I do think Steve Cohen has seen plenty of insider information in his trading career provided by analysts that work his fund. That said, he was never found guilty of insider trading. Look it up. He paid a huge fine, but did not admit fault and was not found guilty. Now, there are numerous people around him who were found guilty, but not Teflon Steve!
- rglover 11mo agoThis makes far more sense. "No, no, it isn't a bribe. It's a sure thing!"
- dwa3592 11mo agoThey have found legal ways to do anything that's considered illegal. "They" is literally anyone who's rich and powerful.
- thatwasunusual 11mo agoIf a normal person did this, the SEC would almost certainly call it insider trading.
- recroad 11mo agoHow is this not the top story on US news networks?
- shadowgovt 11mo agoI have a relative who mentioned that his investments were doing pretty well as of late. I asked him what his trick was and he sheepishly admitted that he just pinned his investments to the Nancy Pelosi Index. Whatever she's investing in, he chases the money.
- egypturnash 11mo agoso where's the Top Congresspeople Index Fund then
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- freddealmeida 11mo agolol. Sure they are. Totally massive skills.
- doe88 11mo agoIs this the high-frequency trading for humans?
- Kapura 11mo agoDeeply corrupt country we've created here, and it seems impossible to back out of it. How are you gonna get congress to cut their effective pay? I would bet money that there are people who go to congress _solely because_ of the advantages it will give them back in the private sector. If you even got it on a ballot or something where the general populace could vote on it, you can bet your ass that, thanks to citizens united, the pro-owning-stocks lobby would outspend the anti-corruption folks 10 to 1. I guess the way to start is by shaming these obviously corrupt officials and practices. Much like racism, people don't mind being corrupt but they seem to mind being _called_ corrupt.
- ActorNightly 11mo agoPhilosophically speaking, this is what people want though. The only reason people make money off of stocks is because at the end, someone gives those companies money. And everyone has a choice to vote with their wallets and through their actions in general. For example, take Elon and his actions over the past few years. What should have happened is that Tesla sales dropped across the board, and everyone who owns a Tesla should have been in a rush to sell it for fear of it getting scratched or them personally blacklisted from stuff and ridiculed for driving a Tesla. Tesla employees should also have faced the same public pressure and quit. But people don't care - at the end of the day, politics on Capitol hill is mostly a meme, but what matters is their personal satisfaction. And you look ridiculous if you refuse to get in your coworkers Tesla. So now Elon is a trillionaire. On the flip side, in a capitalistic sense, it honestly doesn't matter if people are rich, the thing that should matter is what power the money gives them. Rich people buying mansions is a good thing - thats money to workers for construction, staff for housekeeping, and so on. Rich people doing things like being able to buy whole media platforms and censoring things is definitely not good though. The question is, is society headed in a direction where people have more and more apathy and eventually nothing will matter as things get progressively worse and everyone is just complacent, or is there a bottom line where people start paying attention enough and actually fighting for change when it gets bad enough.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- cmckn 11mo agoIn September, there was a bipartisan bill in the House to ban individual stock trading. Members of Congress must divest before being sworn in under this proposal: https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5485340/congress-stock-trading-bill https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5485340/congress-stock-... I think that one died in committee: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/5106 There’s another from earlier this year (https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1908?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%22Stock+trading%22%7D&s=4&r=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1908...) that is currently being pushed by a Republican member from Florida. It was blocked by the Speaker. There’s currently a discharge petition: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolution/725 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio... Over the summer, Josh Hawley of all people introduced a similar bill in the Senate.
- y-curious 11mo agoIn a shocker to nobody, the people profiting AND making the rules are not ruling against themselves. An annoying system to be sure
- morgan814 11mo agoThis is why neither party will truly save us. Candidates from both parties seem to mostly focus on social issues (Democrats are 110% preferable here imo). There are very few politicians who speak to the level of corruption and economic inequality we all see. The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies. Switzerland has a council of seven members as their executive branch, not a single person. It's brilliant stuff. I worry that the only way to do better is through an incredibly painful collapse of things. Unless politicians start deciding to write laws that force them to give up power. Which seems almost humorous to suggest.
- foolswisdom 11mo agoWhy is a council of seven better for the executive branch? > The way America was designed may have been pretty novel / innovative at the time but we've learned so much since then about how to build better democracies. Well, a lot of dysfunction in government is the result of later evolution, whether evolution of circumstances or of government. As an example, the combination of senate filibuster (which was around from the earliest days) with the reconciliation workaround (which is pretty recent) results in omnibus bills, which is a well-known driver of partisanship (because you don't talk to the other party at all in order to pass your bill on the floor), and also has significant consequences to individual responsibility (for the same reason, that omnibus bill must pass for your party to do anything, so you can't be faulted for voting for it, and instead you look for carve outs for your interests. If you do decide to hold up the whole bill like the freedom caucus tried, then you get everyone against you and you will eventually fold). This also has repercussions that for things that can't go through reconciliations, just because the usual way of doing things involves more party dependence (than it would to pass bills another way). This of course also gives more power to those running the party within the chambers of congress. My point is that things evolve, and people tend to try to explain the current state of things with reference to the 18th century, and while I definitely believe we should evolve systems to be better, we shouldn't ignore evolution that's already occurred.
- mensetmanusman 11mo agoLight is a good disinfectant.
- shevy-java 11mo agoI'd be more interested in how corrupt a system in this context is.
- RagnarD 11mo agoCan you spell "Insider Trading"?
- gorgoiler 11mo agoThis is insider trading. We have investigators and prosecutors dedicated to combating insider trading. Of all the fascinating ideas being punted around in this thread, perhaps the most tractable and and effective might simply be to ramp up and enable law enforcement.
- avipars 11mo agohttps://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34524/w34524.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w34524/w345...
- mhb 11mo agoDid that edit to the title really help people understand what the paper is about?
- Zetaphor 11mo agoThe new title says nothing, where the one that lead me to click the notification I received actually had information that lead to me clicking
- mhb 11mo ago@dang Any insight about the obfuscation of the content by switching from the descriptive one I used to the opaque one from the paper?
- tomhow 11mo agoThe title you submitted was: Congressional lawmakers 47% pts better at picking stocks When I looked at the thread, the top comment was this [1]: Incorrect title, the finding is "lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension" This is saying that people in congressional leadership positions do 47% better than other members of Congress. That top comment then spawned a subthread containing (so far) 212 replies, debating the accuracy of the title and the actual findings of the report. This is a prime example of why we ask users not to editorialize titles. When people take it upon themselves to write a more “descriptive” title, they often get it wrong, commonly by focusing on a statistic or detail that feels important to them but is not truly reflective of the full contents of the article or findings of the study. But that then becomes the starting point for the discussion, and then much of the discussion thread is responding to the incorrect detail in the title, or is discussing the accuracy of the title, just as has happened here. If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... For the record, I tried to find a way to word the title in a “descriptive” way, as you had sought to do, but from reading the article and discussion thread I determined that the findings of the study were too detailed and nuanced to be able to summarize in 80 characters, and so the only option was to preserve the paper's original title. Still, the submission has received 825 upvotes and 550 comments so far, so it's not as if it's been light-on for exposure. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134623 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134623
- chis 11mo agoThere are a lot of strong claims that the paper could, but does not make. It never says that Congressional leaders outperform index funds. It just says very specifically that leaders outperform other members of congress. The paper also does not include any clear charts on the actual returns the congressional leaders were getting. Having done some reading on this myself I don't think it's the case that Congress as a whole outperforms SPY [1] [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272722000044 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...
- sakopov 11mo agoIt's pretty incredible to see how public data puts this corruption out in the open with specific names at hand and these officials couldn't care any less. The level of corruption here is astronomically brazen. They know no one will do anything and people will just bend over.
- vkou 11mo agoMy friend, in 2025, the president is auctioning off criminal pardons. So far this year, these pardons have cost the government and fraud victims 1.3 billion dollars. His friends, none of whom are elected officials, meanwhile, are making massive options trades before his yo-yo tariff announcements or his Argentinian bailouts, or, or... That is what brazen corruption looks like, enabled by a corrupt court[1] that has made him unprosecutable. All this, on the other hand, is what quiet, hidden corruption looks like. All of the people involved here have power and influence and pull, and they use it, but they don't control the DOJ, and aren't actually unprosecutable. --- [1] And a GOP congress that has handed him (not his office - him) both the power of the purse and the power to unilaterally impose taxes.
- agosta 11mo agoThey simply shouldn't be able to trade individual stocks. Requiring them to tell the world the exact second they're buying a stock doesn't change that that purchase was made to make money. If you're the elected authority who, by your rule, creates corporate winners and losers, we should not merely have to hope that your rule benefits us more than it does you. The job description is clear - you're a civil servant. If doing your job as a senator is unappealing to you because you can no longer invest in individual companies, then don't let the door hit you on the way out. Goodbye
- SilverElfin 11mo agoAgree. Also we need retroactive clawbacks on these unethical gains they’ve made historically
- rayiner 11mo agoCorrect. We should pay Congress critters a million dollars a year like in Singapore and then require them to hold all assets in a blind trust.
- wholinator2 11mo agoI'm curious why a million dollars a year? Wouldn't that create its own problems? We don't want anyone chasing Civil servitude for the money right? Enough to live on while still driving your own car and buying your own groceries is, i feel, the right pay balance for congress, lest they detach even further from the lived experience of civilians. Their finances should be monitored and heavily restricted. No one should think of money as a benefit of civil service
- lumost 11mo agoThere are 100 senators controlling a budget over 4 trillion effecting more than 300 million per year. To be a senator, you must run a 10-100 million dollar political campaign and make friends with every important person in your state. Anyone capable of doing the above competently can make 10+ million per year in the private sector. Underpaying for these positions simply invites corruption or plutocracy.
- tb_technical 11mo agoCongress should not be allowed to change any of their positions (besides mutual fund backed retirement accounts, 401ks, etc) while in office. But they'll never vote for this. I guess the best thing you can do, individually, is watch Nancy Pelosi on unusual whales and make the same moves.
- marysminefnuf 11mo agomy father is a financial adviser and has to cancel a few trades each week because of keystroke problems. we could literally pass laws tomorrow at the state level in ny and illinois that says at the state level exchanges have to cancel all trades made by politicians and shell companies they control or their members will be fined. its literally the perfect legislation to control stock trading. we have to attack it at the state level because thats where the exchanges are.