alt Hacker NewsCongressional lawmakers 47% pts better at picking stocks
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Every single one of these scoundrels will stand up at a college graduation and exhort the virtues of public service and sacrifice for country. But somehow they all manage to get rich in the midst of their own service and sacrifice.
They shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks. When you do so, corruption is inevitable. It should be an expected price of public service that you remove yourself from most other ambitions.
I'd hope that if they were required to live off of their (rapidly depreciating) savings and income, like most Americans, they might consider some of their legislative choices differently.
I think the solution is to pay them more, create very strict laws around insider trading, and enforce those laws vigorously.
I don't know if that's realistic or not as the electorate has already shown they don't care enough to vote their representatives out for doing it and it's unlikely that current members would restrict their earnings. I guess it's good that we know about it, at least.
Just make their trades public in real time. Their alpha will evaporate
It must be just down to the fact that they're so intelligent and tuned into the world that they know where to invest. Nothing to see here folks, move along now.
I would say jokes aside but the political system promotes this corruption.
The discussion here seems to assume that insider trading is the only corrupting influence on politicians.
But there are many other interests that heavily influence politicians.
For example, in many districts you can not get elected without the endorsement of certain unions.
I'm not sure what to make of this study, and their wording is careful:
"After ascension, however, leaders outperform their matched peers by up to 47 percentage points per year"
They looked at the 20 congressional leaders from 1995 to 2021 that traded stocks. They found _up to_ a 47% outperformacnce per year.
It's not clear (without trudging through the data) what the average outperformance was (or if there was any).
Many people mention unusualwhales.com to follow lawmakers's holdings.
Do you get insights early enough or is it too late to turn a profit? Anyone knows how they get the data?
"Our baseline finding is that both congressional leaders in their pre-leadership years and their matched 'regular' members underperform the benchmark by similar magnitudes"
"Earlier studies of lawmakers’ trading by Ziobrowski et al. (2004 and 2011), found their portfolios to outperform the market. However, this conclusion is reversed in later studies. In particular, Eggers and Hainmueller (2013) and Belmont et al. (2022) document the opposite—members of Congress underperform the market during 2004-2008 and 2012-2020, respectively."
I guess the title of "Congress members suck at trading stocks, but suck less once in leadership positions" was already taken
I think you can see the actual numbers on capitol trades. https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians
Despite Congress' general dysfunction, this seems like a problem that could feasibly be solved. It would make most Congressmen of both parties look good to pass a bill that e.g. restricted sitting members to index funds/mutual funds/etc.
Can I find one of these people in congressional leadership positions, who is willing to accept a sizeable campaign contribution in exchange for joining their mailing list which contains their list of stock purchases in real time?
Or is that one of those, "Of course that exists, but if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it" kind of things?
Maybe a better solution is to crowdfund someone to run for federal office under the guise of purposeful naked corruption. Their whole platform will be "I'm doing this so I can get access to information before the market does, and I will immediately disclose that information to my constituents, and provide realtime trading updates".
I'd vote for that person in a heartbeat even if the rest of their platform was non-existent.
Its funny -- out of all the corruption you see from Washington this one seems the most benign. For whatever reason this one gets almost the most constant press. Maybe because its the easiest to fix but isn't.
So make all congressional stock traded public information in realtime?
Just to be fair, they compare every congressperson who becomes a leader with a “regular” (non-leader) congressperson who entered Congress in the same year and is from the same political party. Alternative view: people who becomes leaders are just more capable and better at selecting stocks?
Unrelated: Nancy Pelosi made $130M in stock profits during Congress career — a return of 16,930%
https://nypost.com/2025/11/08/us-news/nancy-pelosi-made-130-...
So... where is the index that tracks their investments, so that we can also profit off their wisdom and foresight?
Between this and the comical definitely not corruption lobbying system it’s pretty hard to take any of it seriously
The one thing that stirs the hearts and minds of the American people is a 67 page deep dive statistical analysis of an issue.
If only Congress and Americans had access to more figures and math, then we would do the right thing. This paper is going to change things. We finally did it.
Who's more of an insider than the person who writes the rules of business?
Anyone seen similar research at least the same depth for other countries?
It's been five years since key lawmakers deftly navigated the market implications of covid-19 after being briefed in a closed-door session [0].
It's one thing to use insider information, it's another to be blatant and unapologetic.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_congressional_insider_tra...
I want to see Nancy Pelosi in jail for insider trading the same as I want to see Trump in jail for inciting insurrection. It's ridiculous that we have as many signs of insider trading as we have and yet we do nothing about it. In a proper system, there'd be an investigation and we'd have proof and we'd do something about it.
I think if you asked average USA citizens, the majority would support more restrictions, or an outright ban on trading, for the legislature. But our country isn't even pretend-run according to the will of the people at this point. The veneer of listening to the people is practically completely gone.
I remember writing to one of my reps about a decade ago, urging that she vote a particular way on an issue. The canned auto-reply that I got in response told me why she was right to take the opposite stance and didn't even pretend to value my feedback. It used to be part of the job that a politician would lie to you and say they valued your opinion, even if we all knew that was bs. It was a real mask-off moment that I didn't realize was about to become the norm throughout our country.
How is insider trading only 47% better. Knowing what they know... I'd do way better than that.
The majority of people with insider knowledge that are trading stocks will either use their knowledge to increase their gains or will tell their close friends and family.
Anyone who disagrees must be new to humanity.
Look, I have my political views, but this is why the whole divide and conquer thing is 100% true. As long as we, whether left or right, allow our entire mind and emotions to be warped and subverted by those in power, we will never effect change and unite against this kind of corruption, which none of us stand for.
It doesn't require us to change our views on areas where we don't agree. It simply requires uniting on the numerous areas where there is common ground.
I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this.
Your average Joe does this and gets ripped away from his family for 10-years. Politicians do it and it gives them job security.
The two-party system amounts to two wings on the same bird. While we're fighting about left vs. right, we're soon going to find ourselves in a new system of lords vs. peasants.
Indeed the very foundational idea of Republican system ("no titles of nobility") makes this inevitable. It doesn't happen on similar scale in Europe simply because our stocks are shit and can't be profited much in any case, politicians just make money on bribes and kickbacks.
Unpopular opinion, but couldn’t this be explained by something as innocent as seeing what changes are likely to be coming?
By having lawmakers as peers, you’d have a natural feel for what laws have momentum, who would benefit, etc.
I’m not ruling out corruption, just that assuming malicious intent often masks underlying dynamics.
Politicians shouldn't be allowed to own private property. Only the people that really, really want to see a better future for their country will get involved in politics. This isn't my idea by the way, it's Plato's.
Right now the people entering politics are people who just want more money. They don't care about anything or anyone else. The sooner Americans realize this the better off we'll be.
Great, so I can copycat their portfolio and do 47 pts better.
Geniuses.
Is there like a TL;DR of what I should do to also get 47% better? Happy to copy someone's profile
My personal opinion is that Nancy Pelosi is an anomaly in the dataset. Her husband is a VC/stock trader.
Ah yes that must be perfectly legal and a sign of a healthy democracy.
/ pelositracker
Imagine my shocked Pikachu face.
We're now at the point where the most accurate predictor of what the administration and Congress will do comes from stock trades. You want to predict a land war in Venezuela? Just watch defense contractor and energy stocks.
We should force all elected officials and senior public servants to put their assets into a blind trust for their entire term plus two years. They should be forbidden from investing directly. So should their immediate family.
But the problem is so much larger than that. The government as a whole is captured by the donor class. It's so well known that even without an explicit quid pro quo, you and your immediate family will be looked after if you play ball. Vote for tax cuts, deregulation or th einterests of some industry and after your political career, you will have a nice 6 or 7 figure job for life. So will your spouse and children.
What brought the most recent government shutdown to an end? The evidence points to politicals who were beholden to the aviation industry. The disruption to air travel was really starting to bite. Tim Kaine in particular. But it's not just one guy. Chuck Schumer whipped votes to end the shutdown and subbed out John Ossoff who would otherwise face backlack in 2026. Every single Senator who "broke ranks" is either retiring or won't face a primary until 2028 or 2030. That's not an accident and many of them are highly funded by the commericial aviation industry.
What's depressing is how little money it takes to buy our government.
My boss has invested in a fund that tracks Nancy Pelosi's stock trades for years, and he's made quite a profit. I wish I could do that.
Shout out to Nancy pelosis husband, one of the most successful investors in history. He has managed to turn 800k into anything up to 250 million dollars. I wonder what his secret is. He could be giving tips to Warren Buffet.
Right, no insider trading going on here at all /s
Incorrect title, the finding is "lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension." This is saying that people in congressional leadership positions do 47% better than other members of Congress.