Members of Congress are so good at beating the average stock market returns that clever investors have now started watching their trades to find out which stocks to invest in. This is what happens when insider trading isn’t punished. Independent newspaper publisher Rick Outzen joins Mike Papantonio to talk about what’s happening.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Members of Congress are so good at beating the average stock market returns that clever investors have now started watching their trades to find out which stocks to invest in. This is what happens when insider trading isn’t punished. Can you imagine hat we can judge what stocks we ought to buy according to what Nancy Pelosi buys or what Chuck Schumer buys, or whoever it is.
Rick Outzen: Whoever, right.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And so you’re seeing the STOCK Act, which was something that was supposed to stop this, it’s actually increased it because, you know what the fine is? $200.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It’s a $200 fine if you commit a trade and make $10 million, and they consider, well, you didn’t report the trade properly. It’s a $200 fine. So what’s the risk here?
Rick Outzen: Well, I think it’s brilliant, that you’ve got these funds that are, I like the name Unusual Whales, but they’ve got a startup and they do track it, and they put money where they see the congressional dollars going. They’ve got two funds, one’s called NANC, the other one’s called KRUZ. And it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Well, NANC, for example, it’s an ETF, an exchange trading fund. Right?
Rick Outzen: Right, right.
Mike Papantonio: And it’s called NANC after Nancy Pelosi, alright. Because if you remember, Nancy Pelosi was the one who tried to fight back any reform. This is just two years ago.
Rick Outzen: Right.
Mike Papantonio: It was up for vote. No, we’re not gonna vote on this. She delayed, delayed, delayed. She doesn’t want to change it because her husband has made so much money, they have become multi-millionaires by inside information. And KRUZ is on the Republican side. You’ve got this KRUZ fund and it’s also an ETF, an exchange trading fund.
Rick Outzen: And it’s K-R-U-Z.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Okay. So what you’ve got here is, can you imagine political parties that are driving the stock market? Because here’s what happens. They go to a meeting, inside information takes place in a legislative meeting, something’s going to happen. So the people come out of that meeting, they trade short, they sell, they buy, they do that with inside information, completely with inside information. If anybody else did it, they’d be prosecuted and thrown in prison. But it’s okay if you’re a legislator because the STOCK Act was supposed to stop it, but it’s made it worse.
Rick Outzen: Well, you see it, we saw in the pandemic, Burr from North Carolina. He knew, went to the meeting, knew what was gonna happen, came out and immediately started capitalizing it. And they’re doing their own ethics. That’s the other issue is they’re gonna write their own ethics. So, Nancy’s pushing back, because I’m sure her membership didn’t want to see it.
Mike Papantonio: Raw Story story did a story awhile back, it showed clearly 40 members, if you took those 40 members and you looked at their conduct with trading with information, with saying, I now know that I got to go buy into Raytheon because we’re going to sell more missiles. Because government’s gonna buy more missiles from them. And they take that information and they go buy in Raytheon. Well, nobody else knows to do that. I mean, we don’t go to those meetings. But now you’ve got a program put together where people are actually saying, what did Nancy Pelosi trade on this year? You know, how much money did Nancy Pelosi make trading on this stock? And it’s this service that you can get.
Rick Outzen: And they’re making money.
Mike Papantonio: They’re making, oh, they’re doing.
Rick Outzen: It’s brilliant.
Mike Papantonio: They’re beating the market tremendously just by watching what Nancy Pelosi is traded. Yeah.