Senators strike bipartisan deal for ban on stock trading by members of Congress

I have some play money in the $NANC Democratic Whales ETF [1] that "invests in equity securities purchased or sold by Democratic members of Congress and their spouses". It's up 23% YTD and is beating the S&P500. Incept date is roughly 18 months ago... I wonder if the greater attention brought to their financial activities is prompting this move? The cynic in me is disappointed because it could mean the end of my corruption-fueled beer money gravy train while their activities continue in a more clandestine fashion.

As an aside: this post is not meant as a partisan criticism. I don't invest in the Republican equivalent $KRUZ because last time I checked it wasn't doing as well as $NANC.

[1] https://www.subversiveetfs.com/nanc

Ok, so there’s not a ton of info in the article about the actual bill itself. Only the caption on the image lists the name: the ETHICS Act.

If you check S.1171 you can see it is in the Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. It may die there if nothing else happens.

If you think this is an important bill, you can contact the members of this committee. They are listed here: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/about/committee-members/

You should inform them that this is important to you, and if they don’t take action on this you will not vote for them or donate to their campaigns, and will support their opponent instead.

This last bit is controversial but important. Politicians care about staying in office. If you will be supporting a candidate regardless, your opinion doesn’t matter to them. So you need to tie their election to something that matters to you.

Any effort by Congress to police itself is really just political theater for consumption by the unsuspecting voter.

How to sidestep this ban? Setup an anonymous trust or holding company in Wyoming or overseas.

Reposting from a child comment:

I don't know why anyone is talking about insider trading. I don't give a shit if the congresspeople do insider trading.

What I care about is that if congresspeople can trade at all, they have a conflict of interest in doing their legislative duties. They are incentivized to pass laws that will benefit corporations and make the stock market rise. That's what is unacceptable about Congress trading.

Banning trading totally is the only thing that matters.

I'd suspect there's loopholes here, the trading will instead be done by a hedge fund on behalf of the congress member(s)

Won't stop lobbyists, spouses, their financial advisors, or them from taking gold bars. 95% are still crooks, or campaign finance reform would've passed years ago. This is a performative ruse.

usually when I see the phrase “strike bipartisan deal” I assume it is something nefarious

this headline sounds nice

where’s the nefarious angle?

It's about time.

Can't they still be prosecuted by the SEC for insider trading? /s