TikTokers Are Trading Stocks By Copying What Members of Congress Do (npr.org) 91
TikTok users are watching financial disclosures of sitting members of Congress to help them determine which stocks to invest in. NPR reports: Among a certain community of individual investors on TikTok, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's stock trading disclosures are a treasure trove. "Shouts out to Nancy Pelosi, the stock market's biggest whale," said user 'ceowatchlist.' Another said, "I've come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi is a psychic," while adding that she is the "queen of investing." "She knew," declared Chris Josephs, analyzing a particular trade in Pelosi's financial disclosures. "And you would have known if you had followed her portfolio." Last year, Josephs noticed that the trades, actually made by Pelosi's investor husband and merely disclosed by the speaker, were performing well.
Josephs is the co-founder of a company called Iris, which shows other people's stock trades. In the past year and a half, he has been taking advantage of a law called the Stock Act, which requires lawmakers to disclose stock trades and those of their spouses within 45 days. Now on Josephs' social investing platform, you can get a push notification every time Pelosi's stock trading disclosures are released. He is personally investing when he sees which stocks are picked: "I'm at the point where if you can't beat them, join them," Josephs told NPR, adding that if he sees trades on her disclosures, "I typically do buy... the next one she does, I'm going to buy." The report notes that Senate and House members have already filed more than 4,000 financial trading disclosures this year, with at least $315 million of stocks and bonds bought or sold. "That's according to Tim Carambat, who in 2020 created and now maintains two public databases of lawmaker financial transactions -- House Stock Watcher and Senate Stock Watcher," reports NPR. "He says there is a significant following for his work," reports NPR.
Josephs is the co-founder of a company called Iris, which shows other people's stock trades. In the past year and a half, he has been taking advantage of a law called the Stock Act, which requires lawmakers to disclose stock trades and those of their spouses within 45 days. Now on Josephs' social investing platform, you can get a push notification every time Pelosi's stock trading disclosures are released. He is personally investing when he sees which stocks are picked: "I'm at the point where if you can't beat them, join them," Josephs told NPR, adding that if he sees trades on her disclosures, "I typically do buy... the next one she does, I'm going to buy." The report notes that Senate and House members have already filed more than 4,000 financial trading disclosures this year, with at least $315 million of stocks and bonds bought or sold. "That's according to Tim Carambat, who in 2020 created and now maintains two public databases of lawmaker financial transactions -- House Stock Watcher and Senate Stock Watcher," reports NPR. "He says there is a significant following for his work," reports NPR.
When will the congress buys/sells be hidden? (Score:2)
Self fulfilling prophesies... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with copy-catting someone is that it creates self fulfilling upward movement as everybody else piles in after the first mover has already acquired her shares.
If everybody copies Pelosi, she can't help but make gains on just about anything. Simply buy low, file the purchase announcement, and then sell off as all the lemmings buy in. Those lemmings end up holding the bag and won't have a clue until she files her sell announcement, up to 45 days afterwards.
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Those lemmings end up holding the bag and won't have a clue until she files her sell announcement, up to 45 days afterwards.
No need to wait for the disclosure. They can figure it out when the stock crashes back down a few days after it bubbled up.
Pump-and-dump works great when somebody else does the pumping for you.
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The trick is to be the first lemming. Then you can profit from the following lemmings. To be first, you need HFT.
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Be first, be smarter, or cheat. [youtube.com]
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Aren't lemmings famous for leading masses off cliffs?
I would think it would be best to hang back and watch where they are going then run the other way.
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Aren't lemmings famous for leading masses off cliffs?
They are famous for it. But that's because of a 1958 Disney film in which the film makers pushed and threw them off of the cliff.
Re: Self fulfilling prophesies... (Score:2)
Evil Disney strikes again.
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I'd be interested to know if that applies here too.
It doesn't. These disclosures are 45 days delayed after the trade. Which is a very long reporting window for equity trading in a public position. Usually it is 48 hours.
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Simply buy low, file the purchase announcement, and then sell off as all the lemmings buy in.
Yes, this is why they need to change it to require an initial public disclosure notice be published of all purchases or short-sales Prior to opening or increasing a position in addition to one made after the trades.
Re: When will the congress buys/sells be hidden? (Score:4, Informative)
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IIRC, Congress is not subject to insider trading rules. They are the ultimate in inside traders by design and there is nothing to be done about it.
Re: When will the congress buys/sells be hidden? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually in 2012 Obama signed into law a change specifically prohibiting congresscritters from conducting insider trading, so they're technically not allowed to do it. The devil is in the details of course, and procedural obstacles dating back to the original Constitutional Congress make prosecuting such a case almost impossible, apparently even more difficult than prosecuting bribery.
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Just a bit of trivia, Stewart didn't go to jail for insider trading. She was just subject to a fine that IIRC would have been slightly less than the money she made on the trade. She went to jail for attempting to cover it up, perjury and falsifying documents I think.
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Between sessions? NC Senator Burr was texting his money manager with insider details while IN session, it's only because of the procedural almost-impossibility of prosecuting sitting congresscritters that the case was dropped.
Imagine my surprise (Score:1)
I was surprised to see a negative article from someone on the left. But then I realized this fits the "see, late stage capitalism" grand scheme.
Carry on.
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Unlike the cons, liberals and progressives have no problem with holding their members to account. Of course since Pelosi is neither liberal nor progressive no one on the Left is likely to stand in the way of a prosecution if the SEC or FBI can get past the congressional hurdles anyway.
Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:5, Informative)
The S&P 500 has returned 17.7% annually with dividends reinvested over the past 5 years. This is the time where everyone with a pulse can come up with schemes to only buy stocks from companies whose CEO is born in February and still make a hefty return. Then it all comes to an end once some sanity is returned to the market. I have no insight into when that will be, other than it is guaranteed to happen eventually.
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Seems legit...
"Nancy filed the disclosure form July 2. The transaction was ultimately completed a week prior to the Judiciary Committee vote. The votes were supposed to advance six bipartisan antitrust bills, four of which targeted Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook."
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Re:Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:5, Insightful)
The S&P 500 has returned 17.7% annually with dividends reinvested over the past 5 years.
Yeah. Many people think it's a good thing when you have a stock market that constantly goes up.
Until you realize that the reason it keeps going up is that your dollars are getting devalued to keep propping it up. Unless you are paid in stocks (like CEOs) cash earners are getting the short end of the stick.
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If you own a large number of homes, it's a windfall. Free money! Which means somebody else will have to earn it and not get to keep it - like, renters paying more rent.
If you own one house - homeowners like 'appreciation', but it's sort of an illusory increase in wealth, at least until you take that reverse mortgage on your way out the door.
Re:Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you own a single home, appreciation is just a fancy word for "Higher Taxes".
That's not how property taxes work, unless your house is oddly the only one going up in value in the county.
Re: Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:2)
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I really don't get why people whine so much about property taxes. We live in a stupidly-expensive neighborhood just across the lake from Seattle, an area with one of the highest property taxes around (mind you we bought the house 25+ years ago, before prices started rising). We pay under $7,000 a year in taxes, we could probably get away with paying less but don't even try since we **like** living in an area with good infrastructure and schools good enough to make sure we have intelligent neighbors.
People
Re: Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:2)
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If people are living on just Social Security they're not going to be able to maintain a house, period. Once upon a time that was possible, but that was before 1990.
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Until you realize that the reason it keeps going up is that your dollars are getting devalued to keep propping it up.
A certain rate of inflation is expected and necessary for the whole economy to work - there would be a lot less economic activity if people were able to just stick money in a savings account to retain value, and over long periods of time, the markets return on average a rate greater than dollars are inflating.
Re: Any scheme makes money in a bull market (Score:2)
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Turn your money into precious metals like gold or silver, it goes up with inflation.
Actually, the price of precious metals peaked not too long ago in 2020, and has gone down since then - These assets are likely in a speculative bubble phase at the current time spurred by irrational fear of surprise extreme inflation, As in doing that today or in the near future is likely a way of losing more money than inflation will lose you, unless things go very wrong for the Fed and inflation gets a lot worse than th
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Sure, until it doesn't. Russia, South Africa and Australia could all collapse the gold and diamond markets tomorrow if they saw some advantage in it just by dumping their stored excess, and if someone finds where the Inca stashed the wealth of Cusco before the Spanish barbarians arrived your precious metals market is in the crapper.
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Savings have certainly been more secure and DeFi seems to indicate that the banks are getting rich off them.
Also I feel that a lot of people are investing in companies that they don't entirely agree with/support certainly the idea that companies are growing this rapily means that someone is getting shafted (probably the consumer).
As a liberal I support regulation as a means of curbing greed and selfishness. But as an investor I do see regulati
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If deflation causes its' value to go up, people hold on to it, shrinking the economy and causing further deflation.
If inflation causes its' value to go down, people spend it quickly, heating up the economy and causing further inflation.
So, properly managed (big ask, I know) fiat currency can be much more stable than currency tied to fixed "assets" like gold.
Two is a bit less than seventeen. Really dude? (Score:2)
I see that your nick is "cow dung" but you've GOT to be smarter than that.
The dollar has been devalued at just under 2% annually the last few years, while investments were earning 17%+. Then this year inflation popped to 5% with new government spending, for a total inflation 2.76% over the last five years. While your investments were earning 17.7.
You do understand that 17.7% is MORE than 2%, right? Quite a bit more.
You really think that when invest $100, it grows to $118 minis $2 inflation you've lost out
Re: Two is a bit less than seventeen. Really dude? (Score:2)
So what are you trying to say by repeating OPs nos and adding a question mark ?
Only thing u told us is you have some fetish for cowdung.
Or maybe you are a paid shill for a pump n dump of cowdung ?
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Using the US government's inflation calculator, I put $100 in for Jan 2016. Today, that would be $115.47 in inflation dollars. So investing still beats inflation, but not by the margins it initially appears. Inflation is continuously compounding, not a one time event.
And mind, real inflation is higher than the official CPI-U index. BLS is allowed to make substitutions for cheaper alternatives, without changing the historical info. The typical apocryphal example is subs
Well it's twice as much. Also, Rand lied to you (Score:2)
> I put $100 in for Jan 2016. Today, that would be $115.47 in inflation dollars.
And $100 invested becomes $225.88 over the same period.
$226 is rather more than $115. About twice as much, in fact.
> The typical apocryphal example is substituting ground beef for steak.
Rand Paul lied to you. The CPI does not switch out ground beef for steak and call it the same thing. Actually, they are two completely different categories. There are some things to like about Rand Paul; in this instance he threw out a cou
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What ranton said, plus consider that the reported trades are often over a month old. What stock service brags about reporting trades done a month ago? They had faster reporting back in the 1800's.
Secondly, a great deal of the activity is from newly elected members of congress selling all their individual stocks, putting the money into an index fund, and leaving it there during their term of office to avoid conflicts of interest accusations. Why would anyone want to use that as an investing template? You mig
Market (Score:1)
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You might be partly right, but a 45-day time lag doesn't exactly make for a level playing field.
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I'm sure you're chuckling just as much about that as I am. I'm reminded of Alastair Crowley's famous statement: "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law".
Re: Market (Score:2)
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So those who are following this latest trend think that they are, for now, also gaming the system, but of course some savvy investors will also see this happening and figure out a way to take advantage of it. Just like you say, no one can really maintain an advantage for long, especially not when the strategy gets slashdotted.
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Well, they do apply, but there are obstructions to prosecution, some dating back to the original Constitutional Congress, that make it practically impossible to prosecute cases. Even the South Carolina senator who was texting his investment guy with info from inside the (IIRC) Intelligence Committee hearings had the case dropped because it was almost impossible to get admissible evidence.
Too late (Score:2)
Congress has one advantage, advance knowledge.
But it takes way too long in this modern age for you to hear what they did and act on it.
Note, in a fair world, the President, Judges, and Congress would be forced to use the same rules as employees of major M&A law firms. I.E. forbidden from buying stocks and options directly, being restricted to using ETFs, mutual funds, and bonds.
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would be forced to use the same rules as employees of major M&A law firms. I.E. forbidden from buying stocks and options directly, being restricted to using ETFs
Not exactly fair. Someone might have an employer that imposes heavy restrictions for the convenience of the employer more easily ensuring compliance , but there's no laws against those employees buying stocks, as long as they don't possess/have access to any material non-public information related to the stock(s) at hand when ordering the tr
Re: Too late (Score:2)
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What Congress is doing doesn't meet the definition of insider trading. They are not receiving information from someone inside the company that they are trading.
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What Congress is doing doesn't meet the definition of insider trading. They are not receiving information from someone inside the company that they are trading.
Insider trading is trading based on non-public information. It doesn't have to come from someone inside the company being traded.
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Good point.
Follow the disclosures, or ... (Score:5, Informative)
Follow the non/late-disclosures. From July 29, 2021, 3 Members Of Congress Failed To Properly Disclose Up To $22 Million Of Stock Trades [forbes.com]:
Three Republican members of Congress did not report up to $22 million in stock trades made earlier this year within 45 days of the transactions, as required by law, an elections watchdog group said in ethics complaints filed Thursday afternoon.
The late disclosures by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah) and Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) all violated the STOCK Act, the Campaign Legal Center said in its complaints to the Senate Ethics Committee and the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Fallon’s trades, worth between $7.8 million and $17.53 million, included shares of Boeing, which he oversees as a member of the House Armed Services Committee.
Tuberville’s trades, worth between $894,000 and $3.56 million, included shares of healthcare companies that he oversees as a member of the Senate health committee.
Moore’s trades were between $70,000 and $1.1 million.
Another article discusses 7 House Lawmakers Didn't Disclose Stock Trades [npr.org] -- 4 Democrats and 3 Republicans -- 5 of the 7 lawmakers sit on the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
Re: Follow the disclosures, or ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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"I bought stocks like Tracey Jordan on 30 Rock!" (Score:2)
"I made enough to buy a new house. It was only $20 at Goodwill and belonged to a celebrity named Barbie. You heard of her?"
Congressional Mutual Fund? (Score:2)
This is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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I strongly agree, and I *hope* this isn't news to anyone. Corruption is bipartisan.
Re: This is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
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Last i checked, Congress had exempted themselves from the insider trading laws, with the 45-day provision. So no, there's nothing the SEC can do about it, no matter how scummy it is.
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I saw that one on "60 Minutes" or some such. Back during the 2008 crisis. Wherein they basically said that congress cannot get busted for insider trading. Note this was long before the STOCK act was passed. Some of them are finding workarounds to the law even now.
" In 2008, Visa offered congresswoman Pelosi IPO stock access just as legislation, which Visa strongly opposed, arrived at the House.
Apparently fearless of a conflict of interest, Pelosi and her husband bought 5,000 shares of the stock at the rock-
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I wonder if we could get lawmakers to have all stock transactions to go through a fund that they directly (or if they choose, indirectly) run. This would enable them to buy individual stocks, similar to what the do today, but with the major exception being that others could buy into those funds and benefit in the same way. While it wouldn't address the corruption, it would make it so that they aren't the only ones benefiting from it, and would limit the upside since many others would have a similar position
Re: This is the problem (Score:2)
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our insane defense budget
And there you touched on the heart of the problem, the misnomer of calling our military the "Department of Defense". The US spends more than the next 8 countries combined, six of whom are allies, we could reduce our spending by 70% and still be the biggest buyer of war toys on the planet. Europe has no interest in spending more money on its military because it would be pointless, who are they defending from? Morocco? Iceland? Even at the height of the Cold War the Soviets had no interest in invading th
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US politicians being allowed receive money from corporations and to own stocks is a perversion of democracy.
Yeah. And, a law giving some transparency on the perversion is a step in the right direction.
Politicians are supposed to have the interest of their voters in mind.
That would be nice if it were true. Successful politicians do convince their voters they have their interests in mind.
It's up to the voters to actually vet their integrity, so a law like this can be helpful in limiting the perversion.
Insider trading (Score:2)
TikTokers Are Trading Stocks By Copying What Members of Congress Do
Sweet, a way to do insider trading and all manner of other kinds of corruption that isn't going to land you in jail.
Pelosi has enough money to start a business (Score:2)
Their support would mean a lot and business people who do this certainly gain confidence.
There are tonnes of great ideas out there and politicians are supposed to have hiring and efficiency skills which could be useful.
Set a good example Pelosi et. all, and help someone acheive a useful dream in an arena where your voice can still be heard. If our society is so safe it should be possibl
Was /. paid to post this? (Score:1)
Just make sure you use the right app (Score:2)
Keep in mind that this strategy probably only works if you use TikTok. Don't lose sight of the central technological figure in this story!
Self-fulfilling prophecy (Score:2)
Maybe Pelosi is watching the Tick Tockers for an extra kick
Makes a mockery of the market (Score:2)
45 days is an eternity (Score:2)
You could easily get screwed if the whale dumps a stock and you don't find out about it for 45 days. You could also get screwed if the whale pumps and dumps within that time frame.
Too good to be true... (Score:2)
The easiest way to determine if someone is trading on non-public information is the performance of their investments. Even a top performing portfolio will have off quarters or years or will buy some clunkers. Pelosi's continued extreme outperformance of the market and reliable portfolios tell the story of someone who is either some kind of financial genius or someone who is trading on non-public information.
Pelosi's husband bought $1M of TSLA calls (Score:2)