
They Sold Their Stock. They could've made a difference, but they made a profit - patrickdevivo
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/burr-loeffler-stocks-coronavirus.html`
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hkmurakami
Burr's actions look bad.

Meanwhile Matt Levine rebuts It for Loeffler:

""" Similarly Loeffler sold as much as $3.1 million worth of stock (the
reports give only broad ranges for each asset), which sounds like a lot for a
senator, until you remember that “the Atlanta businesswoman, whose husband is
the chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, is worth an estimated
$500 million.” So she learned devastating news about a global pandemic and
rushed out to sell … stock worth 0.6% of her net worth? Really? At that level
of wealth that’s just a minor portfolio tweak; if she was going to insider
trade, surely she’d have gone bigger. Also frankly at that level of wealth—and
having a stock exchange CEO in the family—it seems unlikely she’s making such
tiny trading decisions at all. As, in fact, she said:

Loeffler responded on Twitter by calling criticism of her stock sales “a
ridiculous and baseless attack.” The tweet said “I do not make investment
decisions for my portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-
party advisors without my or my husband’s knowledge or involvement.”

That is a much better response than “no I sold before the stocks went down”!

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-20/senato...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-20/senators-
picked-a-good-time-to-sell-stocks)

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tsycho
Just to play devil's advocate:

Selling stock takes 5 mins, even less than that if you just relayed the
instruction to your spouse. A senator who comes out of a briefing convinced
about the gravity of the situation, and then takes every possible action to do
the right thing after, but also takes a few mins to sell their stock, is okay
in my book.

Basically I care much more about what other actions they took, and how they
fared at their actual job.

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valar_m
When you sell a share of stock, someone else bought it. How is it okay to sell
a security to an unsuspecting buyer when you have nonpublic information that
you know affects its value?

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icedchai
It's unlikely the seller has enough shares to move the market. The buyer
would've bought it anyway.

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valar_m
It's not about moving the market, it's about selling a security when you have
nonpublic information that it's worth less than its price. That's a crime. And
of course the buyer wouldn't have bought it if they had the same information.

~~~
tsycho
Insider trading is _effectively_ legal for congresspersons after the STOCK act
of 2012 was amended in 2013 to remove the online disclosure requirement.

[https://investmentu.com/why-congressional-insider-trading-
le...](https://investmentu.com/why-congressional-insider-trading-legal-
profitable/)

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afrcnc
They're business people and CEOs elected in public functions. They did what
they were trained to do. Watch their own backs.

This is why business people should not be eligible for public functions unless
10-20 years removed from any executive job. Would love to see a government led
by academics for once.

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necovek
That means you do not have intimate knowledge of how academic institutions
operate. They are similarly led by internal preferences, money, position/rank
grabbing, and disregard for rules and fairness.

People are people. And being smart and knowledgable is far removed from having
any common sense.

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bsg75
I would applaud insider trading criminal charges to be leveled in these cases,
but I'm not going to hold my breath.

