You fail to tie the knot that the reason they were elected in the first place is that they are smarter and better than us. It's only natural that they'd get all the best picks, you clod. /s
You will most likely be unsurprised to know that Wikipedia describes Dan Meuser as, "an American businessman, politician, and philanthropist serving as the U.S. representative for Pennsylvania's 9th congressional district since 2019." In that order. Businessman first.
Edit: Unrelated but sort of related- "In December 2020, Meuser joined over 120 Republican members of the House of Representatives in signing an amicus brief in support of a Texas lawsuit that sought to invalidate Pennsylvania's 2020 presidential election votes."
That's not necessarily the case. Wasn't it a big issue recently saying that high tech earners had been putting shares of startups into their Roth IRA then it was worth way more than intended later?
Peter Thiel also. As far as I know, he legally contributed to the IRA and then invested the money in his own businesses, which grew several thousand percent.
Everyone in America knows that if you're making money in the stock market, it must simply be due to the fact that you are very smart. 🙃
Also, because the folks on this list are entrenched House Reps in permanently safe seats, there's very little to actually be done. I can't vote against Nancy Pelosi from Texas. You can't vote against Dan Meuser from Florida. So what is anyone actually supposed to do? Should I raid Dan Crenshaw's office because Donald Beyer cleaned up? Or should I book a flight to Philly to protest a Congressman I didn't know existed until today?
I also should note that there's a certain fudging of numbers here. Buffett has been in the investment game since the 1950s, but - with the exception of Pelosi - all these guys took office in the last 8 years. The NASDAQ market average over the last 8 years has seen a 20% growth average, with a number of years in which it has grown 40% in a single year. If you just showed up in Congress in 2019 and put all your money in The Magnificent Seven or the FAANG stocks (large, stable, popular blue chip firms) you could also outperform Warren Buffet. If you dumped all your money into an S&P Index Fund, you'd be performing comparably. If you just owned Berkshire Hathaway stock starting in 2019, you'd be outperforming Warren Buffet.
So much of the above isn't Congressmen beating the system, its records starting for a group of Congressmen who happened to take office during the biggest bull run in the market's history.
Truth Social has been cleaning up. And if you consider all the money Trump has received to pay off his civil penalties, he's had some of the best years in his family's lifetime in '23 and '24.
A company with a few thousand active users who has a multi-billion dollar valuation, yes.
The fact that it could lose $4B in market cap tells you how absurdly overvalued that knock-off Mastadon instance has become. Trump did the equivalent of opening a Discord channel and listed it on the NYSE for a comically high value.
It's also harder to invest with the amount of funds that Berkshire Hathaway has. The slippage must be a difficult task to manage. Also, they have to make more than 20% because they have to payout the employees and guarantee growth for the investors.
Anyone can make 100% return in a year or two in the stock market. Does that make them corrupt or better than Buffet?
Or is it that you need to look at it over a 30 year period.
While it's not really great that any representative basically gets to do insider trading, it's frustrating that Pelosi gets most of the heat. It feels very targeted and people complaining about the issue often only complain about her and not the many many other representatives that do the same thing.
This graphic literally includes three more people aside from Pelosi. it is doing the opposite of what you're frustrated about. it would be more bizarre if it didn't list the congressperson who is most notable for profiting from insider trading.
They shouldn't be trading options, which is part of the heat. Normal people don't do that.
But also, Pelosi's trades (or her husband's trades) have mostly been bullish on big name tech companies based around the Bay Area. It just so happens that sector has utterly dominated stock returns in the last few decades, and not even in a surprising way. So that's not really insider information, but rather adopting an unusually high risk profile for gambling on already successful tech stocks.
Shes is actually perfect for that. She outperformed in 2023, but underperformed in 2022. You would expect a Gaussian distribution around the mean. And if you include every congress member, you get a Gaussian distribution, shifted slightly to the left.
The truth to this aside, the stock market hasn't ever been like it is over the past decade.
I kind of feel like I suck at trading, but over the past year I'm still up 40.5% by doing almost nothing but keeping mostly the same stocks I've had for the past few years. Buffet was able to do it through a ton of years where stocks didn't climb very quickly as a whole.
Exactly, getting a 20% return on average for years and years is what makes Warren Buffet one of the best Investors. Getting a good year can happen to anyone.
Also, huge gains while investing in 0.001% of a company is one thing. Maintaining those gains when the funds under your control represent major stakes in the companies you invest in, enough to get board seats and move prices by your transactions alone, is another thing entirely.
Man. I mean I know I'm pathetic in absolutely every way, but it hurts to read that. I have 2 ETFs (vanguard sp500 and emerging markets) and a us bond that I use as a secondary savings account and all they do is lose and occasionally stay flat...
No, if it's the s&p500 ETF (VOO in the usa, VUSA in UK) it has the stocks from the s&p500, they didn't choose anything. It's just the 500 biggest companies in the US (roughly). Either you don't have that, or something else is going very wrong.
What are the actual ticker symbols of your investments? Agree with the other user that something isn't adding up here. You're likely not invested in what you think you are
Bruh vanguards total market index is up 20% in the past 6 months. The person you're replying to is an outlier, don't try to beat the market you will almost certainly lose in the long run.
Pragmatic investing is not exciting or fun. Put your money in index funds and leave it there until you need it.
There's like a week or so delay in them having to report trades, by then you've missed the profit, drive there's up a little, and when they sell it drops the price because they have a bunch of shares.
A week later you find out they sold, maybe make a slight profit if your fast. Then you hear what they bought a week and go give them even more money.
Because all the extra money following them, them selling a company could domino into real world consequences at the company like layoffs.
The system is broken. We're past the point of "gaming" it for scraps. We need a better system or we're fucked.
People have already tried and failed doing exactly that. Because they aren’t required to report their trades when they’re making them; There’s a significant gap in reporting, so by the time the trade gets reported the stock has already increased/decreased like the congressperson expected.
For instance, let’s say [Generic Congressperson] sees a bill that will help a particular company. They know this bill is going to pass. So they buy stock in the company, vote for the bill, and the stock goes up. They then sell the stock. Three months later, those trades get reported. And now it’s too late, because the company’s stock has already been boosted. So buying now would just be buying after the boost.
This is quiet a bet. All congress members are distributed in a Gaussian distribution around the S&P 500. So copying everyone would just give you the same average. So you would have to pick the members, who outperform consistently. But this changes year over year. For example Pelosi outperformed in 2023, but underperformed in 2022.
And at that point you could just buy individual stocks – or even better: stick to a market neutral ETF.
