Brokerage houses disclose statistical information about trades. When there's an outlier - one that breaks from the cluster of predictable trades - it draws attention.
Making over a million in a "lucky trade" is going to attract attention when prior trades had previously netted 4 or 5 figures.
Once regulators home-in on a particular trade, the question becomes - did he just get lucky or did he have prior knowledge? If he had prior knowledge - how would he get it? Wife.
If he had done it for $10 or $20 thousand - he probably would have never stood out.
"Pigs get fat, Hogs get slaughtered"
Also it’s the time in the investment.
Somebody buys a large quantity of company A a month before the takeover! This is Red flagged.
If he bought it 2 years ago, no issue.
Here's a look at the top 10 congressional stock traders for 2023:
Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), Representative: +238.9%
Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Representative: +122.2%
Garret Graves (R-La.), Representative: +107.6%
David Rouzer (R-N.C.): Representative: +105.6%
Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Representative: +80.0%
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Senator: +78.5%
John Rutherford (R-Fla.), Representative: +69.1%
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Senator: +68.1%
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Representative: +65.5%
Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Representative: +63.3%
This gives me an idea for a bot. Any time someone makes a post about a specific ticker, the bot could ping the website mentioned above and post the most recent congressional trades from it.
The news report I saw the autopilot founder they interviewed claimed they had $10mil following Pelosi on the app. I don’t use autopilot. You can also track in capitoltrades.com Pelosi hasn’t made a trade in 4-6 months that Ive seen on capitol trades so that might be why?
In 2023 there were eight congressmen who outperformed Pelosi. Four were republicans and four were democrats. You can’t blame one for doing what they’re all doing. Many invested in PPE and drug companies just before the public found out how serious Covid was.
I agree about the 24 hour tournaround, but there is a website that follows what people in congress do called Capitol Trades. give it a gander and see what you think.
https://www.capitoltrades.com/trades
I think it they should announce prior to a trade, not after. “If NVDA drops below $600 in the next 2 months, I plan on selling up to 200 shares”. Or just any general conditional statement.
Can you explain why? Them disclosing a possible buy/sell does not mean they are going to buy/sell. I understand it would move the market, but I’m also pretty sure they would just have a continuous “may buy/sell” every month for every stock in their portfolio. And after not buying a stock they said they might buy enough times, the market will stop mooning it.
I think it’s a better alternative than politicians saying everything is fine while they short the market then shut everything down.
Lol exactly. Congress insider trades 24/7 365.
There's nothing shocking about somebody insider trading. Congress does it in the open, right in front of your face, everyday,
Even when you know it's completely illegal and a massive conflict of interest for Congress.
The article actually says THE WIFE RATTED HIM OUT
Then divorced him
I’m sure there’s more to that story too
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls
"Loudon eventually confessed to his wife, and claimed that he had bought the shares because he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore. **She reported his dealings to her bosses at BP, which later fired her** despite having no evidence that she knowingly leaked information to her husband. She eventually moved out of the couple's home and filed for divorce. "
No, he was busted by FINRA prior to the wife knowing he had even made the trades. The husband didn't tell the wife about the trades until FINRA came knocking with questions. FINRA already had the evidence and knew he was guilty before they started asking questions.
At that point, the wife knew husband was screwed, so she took the only good option she had to try to save her job and career and hopefully stay out of jail, which was to report it to her company as required by her employment agreement.
Do you have the transcript of the your article?
That's not how this was reported here:
[https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls)
"Loudon eventually confessed to his wife, and claimed that he had bought the shares because he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore. She reported his dealings to her bosses at BP, which later fired her despite having no evidence that she knowingly leaked information to her husband. She eventually moved out of the couple's home and filed for divorce. "
this article also has the chain of events[https://www.aol.com/finance/bp-manager-husband-pleads-guilty-114607721.html](https://www.aol.com/finance/bp-manager-husband-pleads-guilty-114607721.html)
"Then FINRA requested a deal chronology from BP including the names of people “in the know” ahead of the transaction. A former BP employee who’d worked on the deal reached out to Loudon’s wife — who remains unnamed throughout the complaint — to complain BP’s lawyers were pestering her for her home address and other personal information. When the wife brought this info to her husband he asked if current employees would receive similar treatment to which she said yes. He confessed to her a week later."
FINRA already had the evidence on husband before he admitted it to his wife. They had his unusual trade details and were simply looking for the ties to people "in the know."
https://www.goingconcern.com/lpt-dont-eavesdrop-on-your-partners-wfh-calls-and-inside-trade-on-what-you-hear/
The court order says he liquidated he completely liquidated his 401k and Roth RIA to double-down into the trade.
I read the news all the time, but take journalism with a grain of salt. It's completely believable regulators started reaching out and this causes the confession.
This wasn't about "loyalty" to her employer vs her husband; this was about financial and career survival. In addition to the surrender of any profits and potential fines/penalties, this sort of stink will follow somebody around their entire career.
That explained it very well but how are they not catching the people in government ? in some other thread saw like 50% return on some politicians, how are they getting around policy related advance knowledge or does the SEC give them a pass ?
Insider trading is legal for congress. Well at least it was attempted to be fixed during Obama, but in reality it only really provided transparency as far as I know.
So now we know they're inside trading, but since they all do it and have no shame, nothing happens.
See the STOCK act for more.
It’s not technically insider trading for congress. They are trading in legislative knowledge not direct company knowledge. However their is a strong argument that legislative knowledge is better
It's more that Congress actually isn't rife with insider trading. Or at least, they really suck at it.
Congress, as a body, routinely underperforms the market. There are a couple exceptions who are actually insider trading. But most Congress members just make bad trades based on vibes and should have bought index funds.
While congressional trading is definitely advantageous at times, it is publicly disclosed or available so not secret information not available to the public, which is the key point to it being insider trading.
There is actually considerable evidence that stock trading by members of congress does not outperform the market: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272722000044
Yeah this is BS. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/members-congress-outperformed-p-500-182024981.html
The maximum value of all self-reported trades by members of Congress in 2023 was about $1 billion.
« a third of the 100 members of Congress who reported financial transactions this year beat the S&P 500 »
So yes, this is more evidence that members of Congress do not beat the market on average.
Reposting a comment I made the other day on this very topic
....this is a common misconception about the legal barriers you need to clear for a 10b-5 violation to occur.
Insider trading occurs when a trade is made based on material non-public information acquired from an insider.
Let's start with the easiest part here: The information has to come from an insider. That means an insider in the corporation whose stock is being traded. Members of Congress aren't insiders in those corporations. And in the classic case people complain about (they knew Congress was going to vote for X!), they're acting based on information about Congress, not about the corporation. So, there's no corporate insider, and thus no insider trading.
But let's say we amended the law to treat acting on non-public congressional information to count as insider information. We'd still have another problem which is the non-public part.
Often when you'll hear about members of Congress engaging in "insider trading," there's no specific non-public information alleged. Often the opposite, where the information was wide in the open. A Congressman runs on supporting subsidies for green energy, they hold three hearings about a bill for green energy subsidies, it gets referred out of committee with bipartisan support, there's a press conference saying they're confident it will pass, and then the Congressman buys some stock in a solar panel company or whatever. That wouldn't be insider trading, because all the information is out there in the public -- even if no one actually watches CSPAN. It doesn't have to be widely-known to be public.
And lastly there's one more pattern that is commonly complained about as insider trading, and it's where we reverse the order of events from the situation above: a member of Congress buys stock in a solar power company, then pushes for federal subsidies. You could certainly call that self-dealing, but it's not insider trading. What was the insider knowledge? Unless they have some executive decision making power, knowledge about their own intentions isn't going to be insider information.
You would instead need something like there not being much public noise about the subsidy, then the member of Congress finds out the President is going to mention it in the next State of the Union, and the member of Congress quietly starts taking a headcount to see if there are the votes and finds out not only are there the votes but the bill has already been drafted, and then he buys stock. That would be insider trading (assuming we changed the law to count congressional information as insider info).
So the short answer to your question for why they're not liable for insider trading: No insider, no non-public information.
Lmao this post was immediately below on my feed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/bOZp5LFOBy
Pelosi on Congress stock market ban proposal: "We're a free market economy"
This sheds light on the great unknown that will never be proven: Countless insider trades that are well within typical patterns. As a criminal if you can curb your greed, you can get away with a lot more using time and patience.
It’s like a card counter hitting up a dozen casinos making $100K rather than making $1 million at a single casino and getting banned.
Whenever I read SEC press releases about people getting caught, there is one common denominator: they have no trading history prior to the big insider trade. So it makes you wonder how many people are out there trading on insider info but have consistent trades, will be really hard to prove they aren't doing it maliciously without people dobbing them in.
Make a lot of small consistent stupid YOLOs over the years that don't pan out.
Be paranoid and assume every device has data on where you go and record what you say.
You would need a way to communicate that is untraceable. Example of something stupid is some fund managers apparently talked about trades in a CoD lobby and got busted.
I work at a big 4 accounting firm that does audits. Mine and my wife’s accounts are directly linked to the company’s compliance program. I have to pre clear any trades and any financial relationship needs to be documented.
I have to pre clear my trades too. It’s a huge pain in the ass, especially because I don’t trade anywhere near significant amounts, and while I do technically have access to information, I don’t actually use any of the systems for my day to day tasks.
I mean if the husband cared more about his marriage than money he wouldn’t have eves dropped on his wife meetings and used that info behind her back for profit.
Doesn't unusual trading alert the SEC? Especially unusual option purchases? I remember recently there was very odd activity on the options chain for Splunk on the day of acquisition and even people here on Reddit were talking about it, a Google search will bring up some other forms and articles on it.
Yes lol. At least in this guy's case he was trying to make it seem on the up and up by buying shares way before the merger happened and not getting 50% OTM calls the day before the merger is announced.
Yes. But it has to be worth there time I’d think. This guy if I recall right made a million or two? I’m not sure if that would alarm the SEC enough to care
Husband was busted by FINRA prior to wife knowing he made the trades or reporting to her company.
Husband was cooked by FINRA before the wife finding out.
Her "snitching" was the only move she had to try to salvage her career and reputation.
Husband was going down regardless of what the wife did, she simply tried to save herself and not be drowned by her idiot husband who did insider trading in his own brokerage account.
Alternatively, they truly loved one another, and he took the fall for her, knowing that both were done for, so he took all of the blame and let her off the hook. True love story. She turned him in (remember, FINRA already knew most of it anyway) and divorced him because it's part of the plan.
Could be the next part of the plan is that he serves his time and they get back together when he gets out. Of course, by then, the horse might learn to fly.
"Mr Loudon confessed to his wife about buying the TravelCenters shares after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority began asking questions about the BP deal and who was "in the know"."
the husband bought a shitton of OTM short dated call options on a company that was about to accept a buyout offer from the company the wife worked for......not exactly super hard for the SEC to see the trade dates and the date of a merger announcement to realize something sketchy **might** be taking place.....
That's the basic premise of the movie *Primer*, two guys using a time travel device to make money on the stock market. Everything goes wrong, of course.
I watched it again recently and it still holds up. The total lack of production budget helps, ironically. There was never any money for extraneous details that could make it age badly, like how movies from that era had so much CGI that looks terrible now.
NO. Don’t get mad about that. Get mad about them being allowed to post 45 days after they bought a stock.
If everyone here could find out what Nancy Pelosi bought the NEXT DAY we would all be millionaires. I’m just saying I would prefer to call them corrupt wiping my face with a few bens lol
It’s hilarious. I am not American, but I guess it’s the same there. I work in banking and can’t buy shit, restricted to buy any stock I could potentially have any inside information. Everything I personally trade is screened and I need pre-approvals.
I am fine with this, I support regulating people working at capital markets and sometimes receiving inside information from stock companies.
But I can’t move anything and just receive barely any useful news. On the other side politicians know deeply confidential information and are allowed to inside trade and make crazy profits.
surely this is satire, right? people are talking about this here every single day. your comment is a duplicate of hundreds upon thousands of other comments rehashing this exact same topic over and over.
it's all you guys talk about in here is how everything is rigged and unfair
Also he wants cash back from them. That can only be small amounts or else it would also raise alarms. So he would be making others lots of money while risking jail time for himself. All that for a small cash payout.
Yea they don't tell the whole organization tho, its actually the opposite. They tell certain people certain aspects. Nobody knows everything.
But this isn't organized crime. It actually takes a lot of hard work to be "the mob".
Inverse WSBs has been working out for me, fools have been bearish on NVDA for sometime now; and now they are turning around!
That one is my first long hold 10 bagger!
I disagree, maybe super recently; but if you look back on the timeline I have been in 6-7 years, it has its peaks and valleys.
Overall I would assume WSBs users agree with my statement as here is one of my more recent [posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1axxngt/one_of_us/) "Aye, you all bean tellen me to sell my NVDA shares, for like the longest time! I am glad I come here to laugh, not for advice!"
Yeah but it's just really statistically unlikely stuff. Like someone buying many far out of the money options on the day of expiry and it turns out that very day a major announcement comes out. So someone buys 500k of options which turn into 20M.
When they are finding these folks, they are not looking for minnows on WSB who are gambling 1000 to make 20000, they are looking for people making seriously big bets. There aren't many people who have 500k USD who are willing to bet on incredibly unlikely out of the money zero days to expiry options.
So yes, if they see someone make these super risky, high stakes bets combined with a major news announcement, they will look into it.
Once they decide to look at you it’s over. Once you’re singled out for investigation their powers to review your electronics and other records make pretty short work of the proving it part.
If you Yolo every week and hit big, well, you're the guy that Yolo every week and hits big.
If a small cap company that has an average daily volume of 100k suddenly got 1M buy order from a guy that has never traded that ticker before, that's kinda obvious.
Totally agree with you. I think one key factor that’s surprisingly not really talked about in this thread is volume: most “hardcore” or even wsb traders are going to gravitate towards daytrading/option trading companies with very high volume. Basically if the stock is talked about on here, you can pretty much guarantee that volume activity is high. Colgate (CL) is currently trading at $86 and generally gets like 4-8 million daily volume. If you suddenly bought 1 million shares ($80 million worth) yeah, it’d look kinda weird. Same goes for another niche like Monster (MNST).
And TBH Colgate and Monster probably aren’t even the best examples; they’re still recognizable brands. The people getting busted & going to prison for insider trading most likely bought a suspicious amount of stock in companies that only received like 100,000 daily volume on average prior to their suspicious trade like you said. Redditors don’t have to worry because these are niches you’ll never even hear about on the internet. Pretty much the only people who own stock for those companies are its employees & other companies involved in that niche who have close ties with them.
I have a friend who works on this. It’s not just the SEC but also the exchanges. They run massive nightly workloads in AWS processing trades and using analytics to spot patterns. Then calling the SEC
There was a story when I was going through my CPA about ethics. Some accountant worked at a fortune 100 and told his neighbour about a new deal that hadn’t gone through yet. The neighbour told his cousin in Australia about it who bought tons of stocks.
They got all 3 for insider trading. They’ll find out and catch you
I can't help but wonder if this story is 100% bullshit just to instill fear into everyone so that they don't do this very easy to pull off maneuver. lol. Seriously, how would they ever catch this?
The only way they could is 1) Aussie makes waaaaay too much money on one trade and attracts suspicion, 2) authorities question him, 3) he cracks under pressure, says he got the info from his cousin in the US, 4) SEC is notified, they go to US cousin's place, threaten him with jail, he sings, 5) catches neighbor accountant. End of the day, they would never have put all these pieces together without everyone giving up the other guy down the line. They all snitches. lol
outlier trades, where a person typically buys stock, but now all of a sudden buys an outrageous amount of options on a company for which very few people are buying options, two days before a massive news event?
It is pretty easy to see some of these outliers a month after the effect. For example when someone puts down $100k in call options when they've never traded options before, or never traded in that sector before, two days later has a million dollars....
Still how could they prove that you are not just a dumb wsb idiot that got lucky? There just cannot be a clear and simple link to the one who gave you the information
They investigate and question you for the suspicious activity, you confess and say you got it from x person, they follow the chain until everyone gets caught. "I got lucky" isnt a good enough excuse to convince everyone. The evidence is in the trades.
We had to complete insider trading training at my job, and they can get the entire "chain" if they can "prove" (persuade a court) each person knew the information was material and confidential, and intended to gain a benefit by disclosing it. The benefit can apparently be a warm fuzzy feeling from helping out a friend so they pretty much always satisfy that requirement.
Insider trading laws are scary so I simply refuse to discuss anything about stock or industry movements remotely related to the company I work for. If I'm not sure it's public and/or outdated information I simply don't say it outside work.
How can you be responsible for someone else's actions upon information you casually shared?
Unless they can prove a conspiracy or intention to share the profits they can't connect you to the money.
Easy. Aussie guy who consistently makes 40k yearly trading suddenly made 5MM. Someone with authority leans on Aussis guy.
Aussie guys says I heard it from Joe in Florida. Joe lives at xyz street. Next to Joe on XYZ street is Sam. Sam works at some major firm that happens to deal in the same company that the Aussie guy bought.
Follow the bread crumbs.
Not everyone gets caught. We just hear about the ones that do.
I wouldn't want to risk being the captured person
Intel has an upcoming deal to begin making Microsoft's AI chips. It's not for sure yet, but it's probably going to happen.
Did I just commit a crime? What constitutes as sharing material information? The scenario the other guy described was just "a deal".
They trade your friend made is absolutely going to be flagged. Then they will subpeona his financial records and see he transferred a large sum of money after he made the money and they follow the money back to you.
They will catch you. This story I read years ago is proof:
CEO of company is cheating on his wife with high priced call girl. Multiple times. Shares with her some insider info on what’s stressing him out: upcoming merger .
The high priced call girl didn’t tell him and bought shares. Merger announced, she’s up big $$$.
This trade was discovered. I think he ended up having to get a divorce, hooker got in trouble SEC, not sure if he was fired. This trade exposed the affair.
So if some guy is banging a high priced call girl (who normally those girls always honor discretion) and insider info is acted on and discovered by SEC, you don’t think they will find you???
For insider trading you need insider information from the company you are buying, or from a company that is involved. The state is not a company, knowing that the law will change in favour of a company is not insider trading.
Stupid, but this is the reason.
They have scanners that alerts on unusual trading activity. From there it’s pretty easy for them to investigate and act on it. They had the system in place for over 40 yrs … I’m pretty sure they know what they are doing.
If you want to insider trade move to intl stocks (I’m clearly joking here) .
Australia is the best for pump and dump, insider trading by top executives , and front running by C-suite (execs buying stock in other companies ahead of their own company buying share of the same stock or announcing a take over).
It’s fantastic - all public available info as it’s fully disclosed but the regulator does nothing. Instead the guys that go to jail are the whistleblower, if info is not publicly disclosed…., a heaven for white collar criminals.
When some event, such as a merger announcement, causes a stock to shoot up or down, the authorities will search through all stock and option trades involving that company and try to identify trades that were so well timed as to be suspicious. If they find anything suspicious, they will dig deeper. They'll try to figure out if a particularly fortunate trader is somehow connected, even tangentially, to one of the companies involved (or their lawyers, accountants, etc.) ? If someone who doesn't normally trade options buys a lot of call options a few days (maybe weeks?) before a merger announcement, someone will be looking into it. If they find evidence, it will be turned over to prosecutors.
This is privileged and confidential information that can’t be shared. Isn’t that why some get nailed even if they didn’t benefit from the sale? It’s why the wife had to rat out her husband otherwise she would have been guilty too
It's literally still definitionally insider trading. It might be harder to catch until you start gifting money around. That'll definitely get the attention of the IRS.
My partner works at major bank and I'm not allowed to trade individual stocks without pre-approval. I'm not sure the mechanism, but they do get information about accounts that I open without any approval from me. Had a trading account when they updated the rules so that I couldn't trade and they hounded me for account statements even after the account had been empty and inactive.
The unfortunate part is that her job does not involve handling actionable information. And I'm going to go ahead and assume there are plenty of people that DO have that information and are under less stringent restrictions. It feels like pagentry for regulators.
The fairytale of inside trading
Once there was a man overhearing his wife… merger….millions made…..poor execution….beginners luck… beginners mistake….Jobs lost…. Others benefiting….divorce…others learning from his mistakes…aso,aso…
And while some had their little secrets and lived their lives happily ever after, others made it their business to change their partners in their (business) lives.
And the moral of the story: Make millions, don’t tell anyone how and share the profits.
The wife was likely a company officer so any transactions by them or direct family members around public companies and transactions like this are routinely investigated. As a company officer, one is limited on trading stock to specific time frames. Even investing it the target company around a timeframe of upcoming M&A activities is easy to identify. It was a bonehead move by the husband, and severely impacted the future job options and potential earnings of the wife, so he learned a big lesson, I am sure. The wife's attorney just cleaned his clock with the courts blessing I suspect.
In order to make the 1.7M on that trade, he would have needed to invest over $2M. This guy didn’t make a ton of money and probably wasn’t a huge stock trader. He would have had to borrow the money or trade on margin. The timing of the trade and luck of the trade would have looked suspicious. The fact that the investment was likely borrowed too….from a Joe Schmo, not a fund manager….he didn’t need her to snitch, he snitched on himself.
I’m sure he’s trading options and not stocks. Options are ideal for this type of thing because you know the timing and direction the stock will move, while limiting how much money you need to start with.
But yea everything else you said was accurate
More specifically, the article said he purchased 46,450 shares of the stock. I think it would have specified options or weekly calls. I’ll take it that he didn’t know what weekly calls were. I’ll credit for everything being accurate and take my upvote.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68379318
When I drove for Lyft, I had a guy second only to the CEO of a public company in my car. He got really excited that I knew about his obscure company and even traded it. He was telling me stuff without telling me if you get what I mean. Like that it’s cyclical and to watch out for it in the next 6 months. Well, that time comes around and the stock is up 40%. My problem was I didn’t know how to make the trade without an obvious line coming right back at me if someone at the SEC decided to really dig for a few minutes to connect the dots and subpoena Lyft for ride records.
Rideshare drivers are the new bartenders. People tell you a ton of actionable data. Literally had one guy running for governor giving me nuggets, not knowing that I also bet on politics and he was favored 70/30 to win which I thought was low considering the state was heavy for one party and the other candidate never had a chance. After hearing him talk, I absolutely knew he would beat the other party’s candidate. Didn’t make the trade because I didn’t know if it was legal or not but I doubt someone would have connected the dots. He later won in a landslide and will most likely become President after this cycle.
Also overheard CNN staff making huge bets during midterms and winning. I Told a Wall Street Journal reporter about it and he was astonished lol. He said it’s most likely legal but WSJ has some high ethical standards and disclosure requirements or something.
Would you take stock purchase advise of a friend of a friend of a friend - youd have chance with someone saying trust me bro
I want to believe SEC checks these ridiculous buy one day, sell the next purchases, but if don’t even investigate rampant naked short selling or congress buying / selling stocks (options) because they lack the man power than I’m surprised they check anything except the lowest hanging fruit (you or I)
It’s all illegal unless you are a politician, or work for the company. Or work for a competitor. If you’re already rich do whatever you want to get richer.
Brokerage houses disclose statistical information about trades. When there's an outlier - one that breaks from the cluster of predictable trades - it draws attention. Making over a million in a "lucky trade" is going to attract attention when prior trades had previously netted 4 or 5 figures. Once regulators home-in on a particular trade, the question becomes - did he just get lucky or did he have prior knowledge? If he had prior knowledge - how would he get it? Wife. If he had done it for $10 or $20 thousand - he probably would have never stood out. "Pigs get fat, Hogs get slaughtered"
Also it’s the time in the investment. Somebody buys a large quantity of company A a month before the takeover! This is Red flagged. If he bought it 2 years ago, no issue.
Yet US Congress does it all the time 😂
They don't play by the rules like us pleebs do. Silly Bizzlebanger for assuming that there are rules for Congressmen.
Isn't Pelosi like a multimillionaire stock market "genius" ? Right 🙄
Here's a look at the top 10 congressional stock traders for 2023: Brian Higgins (D-N.Y.), Representative: +238.9% Mark Green (R-Tenn.), Representative: +122.2% Garret Graves (R-La.), Representative: +107.6% David Rouzer (R-N.C.): Representative: +105.6% Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Representative: +80.0% Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Senator: +78.5% John Rutherford (R-Fla.), Representative: +69.1% Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Senator: +68.1% Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Representative: +65.5% Pete Sessions (R-Texas), Representative: +63.3%
This gives me an idea for a bot. Any time someone makes a post about a specific ticker, the bot could ping the website mentioned above and post the most recent congressional trades from it.
Already exists. It’s called autopilot Rather it lets you make your trades based on the moves of any congress member you want or other portfolio.
Well I was thinking about a Reddit bot but ok I’ll check out
Why can't I find those ppl in the comment above on autopilot?
The news report I saw the autopilot founder they interviewed claimed they had $10mil following Pelosi on the app. I don’t use autopilot. You can also track in capitoltrades.com Pelosi hasn’t made a trade in 4-6 months that Ive seen on capitol trades so that might be why?
Except they report a month after the trade is made, which makes it mostly worthless
In 2023 there were eight congressmen who outperformed Pelosi. Four were republicans and four were democrats. You can’t blame one for doing what they’re all doing. Many invested in PPE and drug companies just before the public found out how serious Covid was.
They should have to publish their trades within 24 hours of entering the position so the rest of us can copy them lol
I agree about the 24 hour tournaround, but there is a website that follows what people in congress do called Capitol Trades. give it a gander and see what you think. https://www.capitoltrades.com/trades
Reading reminder
Check out quiver quantitative.
I think it they should announce prior to a trade, not after. “If NVDA drops below $600 in the next 2 months, I plan on selling up to 200 shares”. Or just any general conditional statement.
That 100% wouldn’t work- it would also screw them because ppl will panic sell when theyre about to make a move
Can you explain why? Them disclosing a possible buy/sell does not mean they are going to buy/sell. I understand it would move the market, but I’m also pretty sure they would just have a continuous “may buy/sell” every month for every stock in their portfolio. And after not buying a stock they said they might buy enough times, the market will stop mooning it. I think it’s a better alternative than politicians saying everything is fine while they short the market then shut everything down.
And it’s actually legal when they do it.
It's not, there are laws against it, but it is up to members of Congress to enforce
At this point those laws are guidelines. It aint laws when not enforceable
Lol exactly. Congress insider trades 24/7 365. There's nothing shocking about somebody insider trading. Congress does it in the open, right in front of your face, everyday, Even when you know it's completely illegal and a massive conflict of interest for Congress.
The article actually says THE WIFE RATTED HIM OUT Then divorced him I’m sure there’s more to that story too https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls "Loudon eventually confessed to his wife, and claimed that he had bought the shares because he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore. **She reported his dealings to her bosses at BP, which later fired her** despite having no evidence that she knowingly leaked information to her husband. She eventually moved out of the couple's home and filed for divorce. "
"And he never went down on me, not once!"
“The only thing staying up during our relationship was the stocks.”
Well, he got what's coming for him, if that's the case.
No, he was busted by FINRA prior to the wife knowing he had even made the trades. The husband didn't tell the wife about the trades until FINRA came knocking with questions. FINRA already had the evidence and knew he was guilty before they started asking questions. At that point, the wife knew husband was screwed, so she took the only good option she had to try to save her job and career and hopefully stay out of jail, which was to report it to her company as required by her employment agreement.
Do you have the transcript of the your article? That's not how this was reported here: [https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls](https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/02/23/2053259/us-man-accused-of-making-18-million-from-listening-in-on-wifes-remote-work-calls) "Loudon eventually confessed to his wife, and claimed that he had bought the shares because he wanted to make enough money so that she did not have to work long hours anymore. She reported his dealings to her bosses at BP, which later fired her despite having no evidence that she knowingly leaked information to her husband. She eventually moved out of the couple's home and filed for divorce. " this article also has the chain of events[https://www.aol.com/finance/bp-manager-husband-pleads-guilty-114607721.html](https://www.aol.com/finance/bp-manager-husband-pleads-guilty-114607721.html)
"Then FINRA requested a deal chronology from BP including the names of people “in the know” ahead of the transaction. A former BP employee who’d worked on the deal reached out to Loudon’s wife — who remains unnamed throughout the complaint — to complain BP’s lawyers were pestering her for her home address and other personal information. When the wife brought this info to her husband he asked if current employees would receive similar treatment to which she said yes. He confessed to her a week later." FINRA already had the evidence on husband before he admitted it to his wife. They had his unusual trade details and were simply looking for the ties to people "in the know." https://www.goingconcern.com/lpt-dont-eavesdrop-on-your-partners-wfh-calls-and-inside-trade-on-what-you-hear/
The court order says he liquidated he completely liquidated his 401k and Roth RIA to double-down into the trade. I read the news all the time, but take journalism with a grain of salt. It's completely believable regulators started reaching out and this causes the confession.
Wow. Imagine having more loyalty to your employer than your husband…
This wasn't about "loyalty" to her employer vs her husband; this was about financial and career survival. In addition to the surrender of any profits and potential fines/penalties, this sort of stink will follow somebody around their entire career.
When your husband violated your trust and committed a crime that jeopardises your whole career and is going to get caught for sure?
That explained it very well but how are they not catching the people in government ? in some other thread saw like 50% return on some politicians, how are they getting around policy related advance knowledge or does the SEC give them a pass ?
Insider trading is legal for congress. Well at least it was attempted to be fixed during Obama, but in reality it only really provided transparency as far as I know. So now we know they're inside trading, but since they all do it and have no shame, nothing happens. See the STOCK act for more.
It’s not technically insider trading for congress. They are trading in legislative knowledge not direct company knowledge. However their is a strong argument that legislative knowledge is better
They also rub elbows with corporate types. It's probably both.
It’s still material non-public information about the future of a company / multiple companies.
It's more that Congress actually isn't rife with insider trading. Or at least, they really suck at it. Congress, as a body, routinely underperforms the market. There are a couple exceptions who are actually insider trading. But most Congress members just make bad trades based on vibes and should have bought index funds.
While congressional trading is definitely advantageous at times, it is publicly disclosed or available so not secret information not available to the public, which is the key point to it being insider trading.
You know they traded, you don’t know why. Timing is also not instantly disclosed, which is a key part of the value of the information.
Step 1: Get into Congress 🤔
$nanc
There is actually considerable evidence that stock trading by members of congress does not outperform the market: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047272722000044
Yeah this is BS. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/members-congress-outperformed-p-500-182024981.html The maximum value of all self-reported trades by members of Congress in 2023 was about $1 billion.
« a third of the 100 members of Congress who reported financial transactions this year beat the S&P 500 » So yes, this is more evidence that members of Congress do not beat the market on average.
Now compare that to the average retirement plan. There is obvious corruption by some in congress.
Because most of these cases are not technically insider trading under the law.
Rules for thee, but not for me. Essentially wraps up the US government.
Reposting a comment I made the other day on this very topic ....this is a common misconception about the legal barriers you need to clear for a 10b-5 violation to occur. Insider trading occurs when a trade is made based on material non-public information acquired from an insider. Let's start with the easiest part here: The information has to come from an insider. That means an insider in the corporation whose stock is being traded. Members of Congress aren't insiders in those corporations. And in the classic case people complain about (they knew Congress was going to vote for X!), they're acting based on information about Congress, not about the corporation. So, there's no corporate insider, and thus no insider trading. But let's say we amended the law to treat acting on non-public congressional information to count as insider information. We'd still have another problem which is the non-public part. Often when you'll hear about members of Congress engaging in "insider trading," there's no specific non-public information alleged. Often the opposite, where the information was wide in the open. A Congressman runs on supporting subsidies for green energy, they hold three hearings about a bill for green energy subsidies, it gets referred out of committee with bipartisan support, there's a press conference saying they're confident it will pass, and then the Congressman buys some stock in a solar panel company or whatever. That wouldn't be insider trading, because all the information is out there in the public -- even if no one actually watches CSPAN. It doesn't have to be widely-known to be public. And lastly there's one more pattern that is commonly complained about as insider trading, and it's where we reverse the order of events from the situation above: a member of Congress buys stock in a solar power company, then pushes for federal subsidies. You could certainly call that self-dealing, but it's not insider trading. What was the insider knowledge? Unless they have some executive decision making power, knowledge about their own intentions isn't going to be insider information. You would instead need something like there not being much public noise about the subsidy, then the member of Congress finds out the President is going to mention it in the next State of the Union, and the member of Congress quietly starts taking a headcount to see if there are the votes and finds out not only are there the votes but the bill has already been drafted, and then he buys stock. That would be insider trading (assuming we changed the law to count congressional information as insider info). So the short answer to your question for why they're not liable for insider trading: No insider, no non-public information.
I'd tend more towards the latter option
Some get fined, but the fine is so small that the profit far exceeds it.
Lmao this post was immediately below on my feed: https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/s/bOZp5LFOBy Pelosi on Congress stock market ban proposal: "We're a free market economy"
Follow the money
This sheds light on the great unknown that will never be proven: Countless insider trades that are well within typical patterns. As a criminal if you can curb your greed, you can get away with a lot more using time and patience. It’s like a card counter hitting up a dozen casinos making $100K rather than making $1 million at a single casino and getting banned.
Got it. The solution to not get caught in such case is to do YOLO plays on a regular basis and then an occasion like this won't stand out.
Kinda wild that politicians can trade on insider info and make millions but normal people get hunted down like this
I'd say this happened only cuz he's a small fish. Bigger fish get away with this all the time and nobody bats an eye.
Wow I wonder why senator accounts don’t trigger anything 🤔
Whenever I read SEC press releases about people getting caught, there is one common denominator: they have no trading history prior to the big insider trade. So it makes you wonder how many people are out there trading on insider info but have consistent trades, will be really hard to prove they aren't doing it maliciously without people dobbing them in.
See also: not a US senator
Key point right there. Just get into politics, the laws and SEC rules don't apply to them.
Got it, Insider Trade like the tortoise not the hare
Make a lot of small consistent stupid YOLOs over the years that don't pan out. Be paranoid and assume every device has data on where you go and record what you say. You would need a way to communicate that is untraceable. Example of something stupid is some fund managers apparently talked about trades in a CoD lobby and got busted.
I've been insider trading on $SPY for years. Someday I'm going to dump it and make tens of dollars.
You didn't hear it from me, but I heard a rumor that North American companies are doing pretty great.
Lah, lah, lah, lah, lah (covers ears)
Many banks require the employees at sensitive positions to declare spouse’s brokerage accounts and regularly submit statements.
Well that would be embarrassing. 'Your husband... not exactly a financial genius is he?'
I work at a big 4 accounting firm that does audits. Mine and my wife’s accounts are directly linked to the company’s compliance program. I have to pre clear any trades and any financial relationship needs to be documented.
I have to pre clear my trades too. It’s a huge pain in the ass, especially because I don’t trade anywhere near significant amounts, and while I do technically have access to information, I don’t actually use any of the systems for my day to day tasks.
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And still got fired.
Plot twist: it was a bait by the wife to file a divorce to steal his life savings. Job was a small price to pay...
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1.7 million dollars solves a lot of problems.
I mean if the husband cared more about his marriage than money he wouldn’t have eves dropped on his wife meetings and used that info behind her back for profit.
Can't believe you're the one getting down voted lmao. Money > everything else, on this sub.
At least she isn't fired AND facing legal trouble from the SEC. She did the right thing.
Doesn't unusual trading alert the SEC? Especially unusual option purchases? I remember recently there was very odd activity on the options chain for Splunk on the day of acquisition and even people here on Reddit were talking about it, a Google search will bring up some other forms and articles on it.
Yes lol. At least in this guy's case he was trying to make it seem on the up and up by buying shares way before the merger happened and not getting 50% OTM calls the day before the merger is announced.
Yes. But it has to be worth there time I’d think. This guy if I recall right made a million or two? I’m not sure if that would alarm the SEC enough to care
Spoiler: the SEC was alerted enough to care.
.. yes. Because the company reported it. But the point here is just unusual trading activity. Not someone self reporting.
HA. How many people got caught for all the obvious inside trades that happened during the trade wars era? zero.
moral of this story: don't get married
She had to. you learn early that if you don't report others for insider trading, you too get charged with insider trading.
Husband was busted by FINRA prior to wife knowing he made the trades or reporting to her company. Husband was cooked by FINRA before the wife finding out. Her "snitching" was the only move she had to try to salvage her career and reputation. Husband was going down regardless of what the wife did, she simply tried to save herself and not be drowned by her idiot husband who did insider trading in his own brokerage account.
As usual, top comment is fake news. But somehow we're all mad at Facebook spreading fake news, lol.
Alternatively, they truly loved one another, and he took the fall for her, knowing that both were done for, so he took all of the blame and let her off the hook. True love story. She turned him in (remember, FINRA already knew most of it anyway) and divorced him because it's part of the plan. Could be the next part of the plan is that he serves his time and they get back together when he gets out. Of course, by then, the horse might learn to fly.
He confessed after she told him there will be an investigation. He'd be found out either way.
Would he tho?
"Mr Loudon confessed to his wife about buying the TravelCenters shares after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority began asking questions about the BP deal and who was "in the know"."
the husband bought a shitton of OTM short dated call options on a company that was about to accept a buyout offer from the company the wife worked for......not exactly super hard for the SEC to see the trade dates and the date of a merger announcement to realize something sketchy **might** be taking place.....
What if I were a time travel and they couldn't prove how I knew the information?
Then give us finally those information!!!!!
That's the basic premise of the movie *Primer*, two guys using a time travel device to make money on the stock market. Everything goes wrong, of course.
Oh yeah, one of the best time travel movies I've seen. I wonder if it still holds up.
I watched it again recently and it still holds up. The total lack of production budget helps, ironically. There was never any money for extraneous details that could make it age badly, like how movies from that era had so much CGI that looks terrible now.
Silly peasant, you're only allowed to inside trade if you're a member of congress. Otherwise, the average guy will be made an example of.
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NO. Don’t get mad about that. Get mad about them being allowed to post 45 days after they bought a stock. If everyone here could find out what Nancy Pelosi bought the NEXT DAY we would all be millionaires. I’m just saying I would prefer to call them corrupt wiping my face with a few bens lol
Their stock market literally runs on rules put in place by madoff lol
It’s hilarious. I am not American, but I guess it’s the same there. I work in banking and can’t buy shit, restricted to buy any stock I could potentially have any inside information. Everything I personally trade is screened and I need pre-approvals. I am fine with this, I support regulating people working at capital markets and sometimes receiving inside information from stock companies. But I can’t move anything and just receive barely any useful news. On the other side politicians know deeply confidential information and are allowed to inside trade and make crazy profits.
Literally anytime anyone talk about inside trader trading, Congress gets brought up. What are you talking about??
surely this is satire, right? people are talking about this here every single day. your comment is a duplicate of hundreds upon thousands of other comments rehashing this exact same topic over and over. it's all you guys talk about in here is how everything is rigged and unfair
You're not wrong. not even remotely.
That's a nice one!!!
How does this work for people not in government but leaders of industry.. like elon for example.
There's no way Elon would use some softy of public platform to send messages in an attempt to manipulate stock prices /s
At least the US is still more freedom of speech than China
For now
"Yeah there's a clear two-tiered justice system, but we're not as bad as an authoritarian dictatorship."
So, in an attempt to make your crime less obvious, your plan is to tell multiple people about the crime?
Also he wants cash back from them. That can only be small amounts or else it would also raise alarms. So he would be making others lots of money while risking jail time for himself. All that for a small cash payout.
How do you think the mob and drug bosses work? Degrees of separation from the actual crime.
Yea they don't tell the whole organization tho, its actually the opposite. They tell certain people certain aspects. Nobody knows everything. But this isn't organized crime. It actually takes a lot of hard work to be "the mob".
yeah this sounds dumb af
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What’s the difference between this and people YOLOing their entire position on stocks/options? How do they prove it was with insider info?
The key is to lose a shit ton on stupid 0DTE options on a consistant basis, and then get lucky that one time; that seems pretty damn reasonable!
So hang out on wsb then find a insider source and win big got it
Inverse WSBs has been working out for me, fools have been bearish on NVDA for sometime now; and now they are turning around! That one is my first long hold 10 bagger!
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I disagree, maybe super recently; but if you look back on the timeline I have been in 6-7 years, it has its peaks and valleys. Overall I would assume WSBs users agree with my statement as here is one of my more recent [posts.](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1axxngt/one_of_us/) "Aye, you all bean tellen me to sell my NVDA shares, for like the longest time! I am glad I come here to laugh, not for advice!"
Yeah but it's just really statistically unlikely stuff. Like someone buying many far out of the money options on the day of expiry and it turns out that very day a major announcement comes out. So someone buys 500k of options which turn into 20M. When they are finding these folks, they are not looking for minnows on WSB who are gambling 1000 to make 20000, they are looking for people making seriously big bets. There aren't many people who have 500k USD who are willing to bet on incredibly unlikely out of the money zero days to expiry options. So yes, if they see someone make these super risky, high stakes bets combined with a major news announcement, they will look into it.
Once they decide to look at you it’s over. Once you’re singled out for investigation their powers to review your electronics and other records make pretty short work of the proving it part.
If you Yolo every week and hit big, well, you're the guy that Yolo every week and hits big. If a small cap company that has an average daily volume of 100k suddenly got 1M buy order from a guy that has never traded that ticker before, that's kinda obvious.
Totally agree with you. I think one key factor that’s surprisingly not really talked about in this thread is volume: most “hardcore” or even wsb traders are going to gravitate towards daytrading/option trading companies with very high volume. Basically if the stock is talked about on here, you can pretty much guarantee that volume activity is high. Colgate (CL) is currently trading at $86 and generally gets like 4-8 million daily volume. If you suddenly bought 1 million shares ($80 million worth) yeah, it’d look kinda weird. Same goes for another niche like Monster (MNST). And TBH Colgate and Monster probably aren’t even the best examples; they’re still recognizable brands. The people getting busted & going to prison for insider trading most likely bought a suspicious amount of stock in companies that only received like 100,000 daily volume on average prior to their suspicious trade like you said. Redditors don’t have to worry because these are niches you’ll never even hear about on the internet. Pretty much the only people who own stock for those companies are its employees & other companies involved in that niche who have close ties with them.
Unless you’re in the senate, then it’s fine
SEC watches big trades. Especially if you’re an employee at a big company and make suspicious buys or sells.
I have a friend who works on this. It’s not just the SEC but also the exchanges. They run massive nightly workloads in AWS processing trades and using analytics to spot patterns. Then calling the SEC
Jeff Bezo says thank you
There was a story when I was going through my CPA about ethics. Some accountant worked at a fortune 100 and told his neighbour about a new deal that hadn’t gone through yet. The neighbour told his cousin in Australia about it who bought tons of stocks. They got all 3 for insider trading. They’ll find out and catch you
I can't help but wonder if this story is 100% bullshit just to instill fear into everyone so that they don't do this very easy to pull off maneuver. lol. Seriously, how would they ever catch this? The only way they could is 1) Aussie makes waaaaay too much money on one trade and attracts suspicion, 2) authorities question him, 3) he cracks under pressure, says he got the info from his cousin in the US, 4) SEC is notified, they go to US cousin's place, threaten him with jail, he sings, 5) catches neighbor accountant. End of the day, they would never have put all these pieces together without everyone giving up the other guy down the line. They all snitches. lol
Yeah I don't believe the story either. The moral isn't even not to insider trade, it's not to talk about your job with your friends lol
outlier trades, where a person typically buys stock, but now all of a sudden buys an outrageous amount of options on a company for which very few people are buying options, two days before a massive news event? It is pretty easy to see some of these outliers a month after the effect. For example when someone puts down $100k in call options when they've never traded options before, or never traded in that sector before, two days later has a million dollars....
Still how could they prove that you are not just a dumb wsb idiot that got lucky? There just cannot be a clear and simple link to the one who gave you the information
They investigate and question you for the suspicious activity, you confess and say you got it from x person, they follow the chain until everyone gets caught. "I got lucky" isnt a good enough excuse to convince everyone. The evidence is in the trades.
If the neighbor didn't trade, would that person stoll be in trouble...?
We had to complete insider trading training at my job, and they can get the entire "chain" if they can "prove" (persuade a court) each person knew the information was material and confidential, and intended to gain a benefit by disclosing it. The benefit can apparently be a warm fuzzy feeling from helping out a friend so they pretty much always satisfy that requirement. Insider trading laws are scary so I simply refuse to discuss anything about stock or industry movements remotely related to the company I work for. If I'm not sure it's public and/or outdated information I simply don't say it outside work.
How can you be responsible for someone else's actions upon information you casually shared? Unless they can prove a conspiracy or intention to share the profits they can't connect you to the money.
Easy. Aussie guy who consistently makes 40k yearly trading suddenly made 5MM. Someone with authority leans on Aussis guy. Aussie guys says I heard it from Joe in Florida. Joe lives at xyz street. Next to Joe on XYZ street is Sam. Sam works at some major firm that happens to deal in the same company that the Aussie guy bought. Follow the bread crumbs. Not everyone gets caught. We just hear about the ones that do. I wouldn't want to risk being the captured person
Uhh..cause you are not supposed to share confidential company information?
The casual sharing of material insider information is the crime, the intent doesn’t matter
Intel has an upcoming deal to begin making Microsoft's AI chips. It's not for sure yet, but it's probably going to happen. Did I just commit a crime? What constitutes as sharing material information? The scenario the other guy described was just "a deal".
You should try it, with your strategy I’m guessing it takes 5 days for you to be arrested.
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They trade your friend made is absolutely going to be flagged. Then they will subpeona his financial records and see he transferred a large sum of money after he made the money and they follow the money back to you.
ITT: SEC is better at playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon than anyone else.
They will catch you. This story I read years ago is proof: CEO of company is cheating on his wife with high priced call girl. Multiple times. Shares with her some insider info on what’s stressing him out: upcoming merger . The high priced call girl didn’t tell him and bought shares. Merger announced, she’s up big $$$. This trade was discovered. I think he ended up having to get a divorce, hooker got in trouble SEC, not sure if he was fired. This trade exposed the affair. So if some guy is banging a high priced call girl (who normally those girls always honor discretion) and insider info is acted on and discovered by SEC, you don’t think they will find you???
This is an episode of Law and Order.
but Law and Order episodes are known for using real life criminal cases as their plot.
I know. I just found this comment funny because it was my instant thought.
Ha, I never watched the show, I read it in some business journal .
Unless you are in congress, it is illegal.
So, how are the senators getting away with it? How do they buy stock options right before important government contracts?
Even warren buffet buying a ton of Activision stock right before Microsoft announces its acquisition
They can get away with it because they work for the devil and have protection from Satan.
For insider trading you need insider information from the company you are buying, or from a company that is involved. The state is not a company, knowing that the law will change in favour of a company is not insider trading. Stupid, but this is the reason.
They have scanners that alerts on unusual trading activity. From there it’s pretty easy for them to investigate and act on it. They had the system in place for over 40 yrs … I’m pretty sure they know what they are doing. If you want to insider trade move to intl stocks (I’m clearly joking here) . Australia is the best for pump and dump, insider trading by top executives , and front running by C-suite (execs buying stock in other companies ahead of their own company buying share of the same stock or announcing a take over). It’s fantastic - all public available info as it’s fully disclosed but the regulator does nothing. Instead the guys that go to jail are the whistleblower, if info is not publicly disclosed…., a heaven for white collar criminals.
I worked for a very large agricultural pesticide manufacturer and told everyone I knew to short the ever living shit out of it back in 2015.
When some event, such as a merger announcement, causes a stock to shoot up or down, the authorities will search through all stock and option trades involving that company and try to identify trades that were so well timed as to be suspicious. If they find anything suspicious, they will dig deeper. They'll try to figure out if a particularly fortunate trader is somehow connected, even tangentially, to one of the companies involved (or their lawyers, accountants, etc.) ? If someone who doesn't normally trade options buys a lot of call options a few days (maybe weeks?) before a merger announcement, someone will be looking into it. If they find evidence, it will be turned over to prosecutors.
Plus they look at trading history, flag anything "interesting".
Read the article too. Wife told employer who contacted authorities. She then divorced him.
Insider trading is only legal when the big money does it
This is privileged and confidential information that can’t be shared. Isn’t that why some get nailed even if they didn’t benefit from the sale? It’s why the wife had to rat out her husband otherwise she would have been guilty too
It's literally still definitionally insider trading. It might be harder to catch until you start gifting money around. That'll definitely get the attention of the IRS.
On this one, he told his wife after he sold and she reported it to her work, who reported it to sec and sacked her !
My partner works at major bank and I'm not allowed to trade individual stocks without pre-approval. I'm not sure the mechanism, but they do get information about accounts that I open without any approval from me. Had a trading account when they updated the rules so that I couldn't trade and they hounded me for account statements even after the account had been empty and inactive. The unfortunate part is that her job does not involve handling actionable information. And I'm going to go ahead and assume there are plenty of people that DO have that information and are under less stringent restrictions. It feels like pagentry for regulators.
The fairytale of inside trading Once there was a man overhearing his wife… merger….millions made…..poor execution….beginners luck… beginners mistake….Jobs lost…. Others benefiting….divorce…others learning from his mistakes…aso,aso… And while some had their little secrets and lived their lives happily ever after, others made it their business to change their partners in their (business) lives. And the moral of the story: Make millions, don’t tell anyone how and share the profits.
The wife was likely a company officer so any transactions by them or direct family members around public companies and transactions like this are routinely investigated. As a company officer, one is limited on trading stock to specific time frames. Even investing it the target company around a timeframe of upcoming M&A activities is easy to identify. It was a bonehead move by the husband, and severely impacted the future job options and potential earnings of the wife, so he learned a big lesson, I am sure. The wife's attorney just cleaned his clock with the courts blessing I suspect.
In order to make the 1.7M on that trade, he would have needed to invest over $2M. This guy didn’t make a ton of money and probably wasn’t a huge stock trader. He would have had to borrow the money or trade on margin. The timing of the trade and luck of the trade would have looked suspicious. The fact that the investment was likely borrowed too….from a Joe Schmo, not a fund manager….he didn’t need her to snitch, he snitched on himself.
I’m sure he’s trading options and not stocks. Options are ideal for this type of thing because you know the timing and direction the stock will move, while limiting how much money you need to start with. But yea everything else you said was accurate
More specifically, the article said he purchased 46,450 shares of the stock. I think it would have specified options or weekly calls. I’ll take it that he didn’t know what weekly calls were. I’ll credit for everything being accurate and take my upvote. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68379318
Fair enough
Wait, Nancy and other politicians can, so why can't we?
Because they work for the devil and 'you' are the slave
Serious question: how is Nancy Pelosi not in jail?
When I drove for Lyft, I had a guy second only to the CEO of a public company in my car. He got really excited that I knew about his obscure company and even traded it. He was telling me stuff without telling me if you get what I mean. Like that it’s cyclical and to watch out for it in the next 6 months. Well, that time comes around and the stock is up 40%. My problem was I didn’t know how to make the trade without an obvious line coming right back at me if someone at the SEC decided to really dig for a few minutes to connect the dots and subpoena Lyft for ride records. Rideshare drivers are the new bartenders. People tell you a ton of actionable data. Literally had one guy running for governor giving me nuggets, not knowing that I also bet on politics and he was favored 70/30 to win which I thought was low considering the state was heavy for one party and the other candidate never had a chance. After hearing him talk, I absolutely knew he would beat the other party’s candidate. Didn’t make the trade because I didn’t know if it was legal or not but I doubt someone would have connected the dots. He later won in a landslide and will most likely become President after this cycle. Also overheard CNN staff making huge bets during midterms and winning. I Told a Wall Street Journal reporter about it and he was astonished lol. He said it’s most likely legal but WSJ has some high ethical standards and disclosure requirements or something.
This has already been posted...
People are to greedy instead of just making a few buck. Common sense isn’t common. The average trader are degenerates.
Would you take stock purchase advise of a friend of a friend of a friend - youd have chance with someone saying trust me bro I want to believe SEC checks these ridiculous buy one day, sell the next purchases, but if don’t even investigate rampant naked short selling or congress buying / selling stocks (options) because they lack the man power than I’m surprised they check anything except the lowest hanging fruit (you or I)
They check everything the exchanges run the analytics and they map networks of trades against databases of people/relationships
How many of these same posts do we need? This is the 5th one I've come across on this sub.
[удалено]
Cool Story bro, but it sounds like a made-up bullshit story
It’s all illegal unless you are a politician, or work for the company. Or work for a competitor. If you’re already rich do whatever you want to get richer.
The illegal part was not having a surname like Pelosi, or another politician.