Yes, and upon assuming a seat of power, I think it's reasonable to expect a politician and their close confidantes to divest of their ties to the market that the politician wields undue power over. As in, they can sell it, on the open market. Nobody's property is being taken with undue compensation. Unless they violate the law, and then it's subject to ordinary forfeiture of assets used in the commission of a crime.
I'm not arguing whether it is a good idea or not, I was responding to the request for where those property rights were in the Constitution.
As for the applicability of those rights to specific issues, that's up to the courts, which have a record of creative interpretations to do whatever they want to.
My point is that you don’t own a stock until you buy it. So you can restrict the ability to buy a stock without impacting the someone’s ownership rights.
> Owning property means one has property rights. The right to sell it is one of those rights.
I've spent the vast majority of my professional career working in finance, subject to SEC rules and regulations regarding insider trading. None of this precludes own, buying or selling stocks. SEC rules prohibit acting upon material nonpublic information for financial gain, the likes of which congress critters do all the time. It is this act of buying and selling on material nonpublic information that is illegal for the common folk, and ought to be illegal for those making the laws that affect the stocks. Don't want to be subject to mandatory holding periods and disclosures? Buy ETFs like the rest of us. And yes, insider trading rules apply to my family as well. I cannot tell my parents or children or siblings or in-laws or friends any material nonpublic information with the intention of financial gain through buying or selling stocks.
If one is going to engage in buying & selling of stock to which one is privy to insider knowledge, there are means to both buy and sell said stock. It usually involves disclosures of intention to buy or sell and a predetermined date. It may typically only be done within a certain time frame, typically quarterly after earnings have been announced. If you're buying, there's typically minimum holding periods (length varies, but it effectively precludes day trading). Point is, there are legal ways to buy and sell within the rules. No one is being deprived of rights. But, if you buy or sell in violation of the rules, there may be forfeiture involved, because you were never allowed to make the transaction in the first place. Break the rules, be prepared to pay the penalty.
Congress is not above the law, and they should be subject to the same rules and regulations as everyone else. This isn't a Republic or Democrat issue. It's common sense, but doesn't benefit the people in charge of making the laws, so it doesn't happen. Or if anything does happen, it's loudly and publicly championed and then quiet neutralized when things have calmed down and no one's looking anymore.
Let me put it bluntly. If I, not being a member of Congress, pulled the same thing Pelosi does with her husband and their trading, my spouse and I would both be in jail and rightfully so. And no, Pelosi is by far the only one, but she's a very public example of this as the Speaker of the House.
I hear you, but I'm not sure that insider trading laws actually accomplish their objective. There are so many ways to cheat on this, I bet it's rampant. It's like anti-doping rules in bike racing.
Now, if it were legalized, professional investors would be monitoring the trading activity of insiders. down to the microsecond. Any adverse trades by insiders would provoke an immediate reaction, and so the gains by such trades would be minimized.
Furthermore, such moves would be public information. Would you invest in a company where the insiders were making adverse trades? I wouldn't.
As for Congressmen, if I was trying to unseat one, you bet I'd make a campaign issue out of them if they're using the seat for personal gain.
> There are so many ways to cheat on this, I bet it's rampant.
You're not wrong on this. There are, and it is. One of my previous jobs I worked at a dark pool exchange. A dark pool is an entirely legitimate and regulated quasi off the books market. It's "dark" in that prices at the exchange are not listed; no best bid/offer or any other order information is advertised. It's also members (customers) only. It's not available to the general public. It's primarily a ways of moving high volumes of trades with the intention of not moving the market. Executed trades are reported as required, and NMS (National Market System) Regulations have to be abided by. i.e. A dark pool cannot trade outside of the NBBO (National Best Bid/Offer) without first having taken (bought /sold) top of the book at the NMS exchanges that have the NBBO. We're still subject to SEC, FINRA reporting and regulation and are regulated by the same.
It was a small firm, less than 10 engineers working on the technology stack, so we all wore many hats. Besides working on the trading system, I was also responsible for working with our chief compliance officer to gather trade data for inquiries from SEC, FINRA, even the FBI. Most of what they were looking for was not insider trading, but other prohibited activities such as spoofing and front running.
I've also worked at hedge funds, private equity funds, mutual funds & investment advisors. Every firm I've worked for (especially the hedge funds & PE funds) have used technology to their best (legal) advantage they can. Need lower latency? Co-location at the exchange is a perfectly legal option. Racks closer to the exchanges offer a premium rent over those farther away. Microwave transmission for line of sight? Most certainly. Lower latency, but also significantly lower bandwidth. Bonus points for being able to bounce a signal off the ionosphere from Chicago to London faster than satellite or sea cable.
That said, when it comes to Congress, they're in the unique position of not just being privy to an absurd amount of material nonpublic information that unscrupulous actors can make a killing off of, they're also in the unique position of enacting (or retracting) laws that affect the companies they're trading on. It's this power that is unique to Congress, and why they deserve extra attention and rules on reporting, holding periods, trading windows, etc.
Insider trading is a problem among the general public, but it's not nearly as big of a problem as the media makes it out to be. Yes, there are unscrupulous firms out there, but the vast majority take the rules and regulations seriously, because you have to, or you will no longer be in business and real jail time for potential violations. I believe Congress should be held to a higher standard than the general public because of their unique power over the industry.