<story><title>Senate Stock Watcher</title><url>https://senatestockwatcher.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Long only is actually a pretty terrible choice if you want a &amp;quot;solid&amp;quot; portfolio with risk hedging.&lt;p&gt;I work in &amp;quot;tech&amp;quot; and I&amp;#x27;m substantially net short &amp;quot;tech&amp;quot; as a hedge for potential layoffs, via options. Unfortunately I can&amp;#x27;t hedge via my employer&amp;#x27;s stock directly (like most companies my employer very explicitly disallows it, plus I&amp;#x27;d be running a high risk of an insider trade accusation; I think it&amp;#x27;s understandable and acceptable).&lt;p&gt;A better idea might be to force people&amp;#x27;s allocation way ahead of time, say any change must be pre-announced 6-12 months ahead of time. That&amp;#x27;s how responsible executives (for example Bill Gates) sell their stock - via long term stock sale programs. Once signed - has to happen, whether good news or bad news.</text></item><item><author>tasty_freeze</author><text>It would be great if&lt;p&gt;(a) elected officials could hold only cash, bonds, and index funds, specifically bonds and index funds that are open the general public and have at least $XX assets, to prevent engineering an index fund available only one one or a few people.&lt;p&gt;(b) pay them better to make up for the loss of gravy. Sure, the pay raise would not be sufficient to make up for the lost income, but it should be high enough that none of them could complain they can&amp;#x27;t live on the salary.  Paying the senate majority leader under $200K &amp;#x2F; year is not enough, considering they often have living expenses in Washington and their home state.  Lower ranking members get paid less.  Pay the leader $1M&amp;#x2F;year and everyone else $500K&amp;#x2F;year and then prohibit anything but vanilla investments.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>knodi123</author><text>&amp;gt; Long only is actually a pretty terrible choice if you want a &amp;quot;solid&amp;quot; portfolio with risk hedging.&lt;p&gt;What if, in exchange for being one of the most powerful people in the most powerful nation on earth, you don&amp;#x27;t get to participate in the same wealth building schemes as everyone else?&lt;p&gt;Instead you get a hefty salary, and the people who say &amp;quot;Nah, I&amp;#x27;d rather get rich in the stock market&amp;quot; are probably not the ones you want wielding all that power anyway.</text></comment>
<story><title>Senate Stock Watcher</title><url>https://senatestockwatcher.com</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>H8crilA</author><text>Long only is actually a pretty terrible choice if you want a &amp;quot;solid&amp;quot; portfolio with risk hedging.&lt;p&gt;I work in &amp;quot;tech&amp;quot; and I&amp;#x27;m substantially net short &amp;quot;tech&amp;quot; as a hedge for potential layoffs, via options. Unfortunately I can&amp;#x27;t hedge via my employer&amp;#x27;s stock directly (like most companies my employer very explicitly disallows it, plus I&amp;#x27;d be running a high risk of an insider trade accusation; I think it&amp;#x27;s understandable and acceptable).&lt;p&gt;A better idea might be to force people&amp;#x27;s allocation way ahead of time, say any change must be pre-announced 6-12 months ahead of time. That&amp;#x27;s how responsible executives (for example Bill Gates) sell their stock - via long term stock sale programs. Once signed - has to happen, whether good news or bad news.</text></item><item><author>tasty_freeze</author><text>It would be great if&lt;p&gt;(a) elected officials could hold only cash, bonds, and index funds, specifically bonds and index funds that are open the general public and have at least $XX assets, to prevent engineering an index fund available only one one or a few people.&lt;p&gt;(b) pay them better to make up for the loss of gravy. Sure, the pay raise would not be sufficient to make up for the lost income, but it should be high enough that none of them could complain they can&amp;#x27;t live on the salary.  Paying the senate majority leader under $200K &amp;#x2F; year is not enough, considering they often have living expenses in Washington and their home state.  Lower ranking members get paid less.  Pay the leader $1M&amp;#x2F;year and everyone else $500K&amp;#x2F;year and then prohibit anything but vanilla investments.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tasty_freeze</author><text>Yes, giving them more freedom would allow them to get more money.&lt;p&gt;But that isn&amp;#x27;t the objective. Allowing them to use only transparent, hard to game investments is offset by doubling or quadrupling their existing base salary. That is the trade off. Some will find other jobs because they want to become megarich. Fine, let them leave; others will be happy to run for their vacant office under the terms of the new deal.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, by investing only in bonds and broad index funds, their goal is to help the economy overall and in the long term. If someone is allowed to buy a ton of Lockheed stock, guess who they are going to steer projects to? If their money is parked in DJIA, to benefit themselves they should do what is right for a broad range of companies.</text></comment>