I am the Senate.
After the national media from the House Report, 2020-2021 year for our Senators has been analyzed.
This report will show:
- The breakdown of trading by Senate members over the 2020-2021 year
- The breakdown of sectors by Party lines
- The biggest trades by Senators
- Whales linked to those transactions via the data tab
TLDR.
- Senators got wealthier over 2020.
- Congress as a whole is outperforming market averages
- Lots of odd looking activity in trading.
- The whale catches the stock and options moves by senators/representatives, but this is only known after the fact due to reporting requirements and delay from the elected official.
Senate Trading during the Pandemic.
In the previous report, it has been looked into the trading behaviours of Members of the House of Representatives in 2020. This time, let’s look at the Senate.
In 2020, 27 out of the 100 Senators traded various types of securities. In 2021, 17 Senators have made trades so far. Here’s the breakdown of how much money (assuming maximum disclosed amounts) was invested in different types of securities. This report will focus on stocks and options trades.
In 2021, the large sell off in Other Securities can be attributed to Senator Richard Blumenthal selling his stake in private equity firms and other pooled investment funds. These types of funds seem to be his favorite type of securities.
Focusing on stocks and options trades, it can be seen that in 2020 Senate Republican disclosures were over $200 million, followed by Democrats with around $35 million, and then there’s Independent Senator Angus King with just over $100,000. This is quite different from the House, where Democrats out-traded their Republican colleagues.
Breaking this down by month, we see that Senate Republicans disclosed a lot of activity at the beginning of 2020, specifically lots of stock sales at the beginning of the pandemic. Example: when Senators Richard Burr and Kelly Loeffler made national news with their conveniently timed stock sell offs.
Senator Loeffler + Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)
Let’s talk about Senator Kelly Loeffler. The biggest trades last year can be attributed to this former Georgia Senator and her husband. She was appointed to the Senate by Governor Brian Kemp in early 2020 after then Senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to health reasons. Loeffler used to be the CEO of Bakkt and her husband is Jeffrey Sprecher, currently CEO of Intercontinental Exchange ($ICE) and Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Basically, her and her husband are as Wallstreet as one can be.
Note that Senator Loeffler was defeated by Raphael Warnock in the Georgia run-off elections in January 2021. However, she’s left the door open to running again in 2022.
In 2020, her family made HUGE ICE stock/options trades (up to $25 million per transaction, assuming maximum investment). Clearly, this skews the numbers. Moving forward, let’s remove these ICE trades. But here they are in case you’re interested:
Stats From Mount Vernon
After the removal of ICE from the first two charts, it can be seen that Senate Republicans still out-traded their Democrat colleagues by a lot in 2020. This is again because of Senator Loeffler’s other disclosed trades, which account for ~65% of the Republican transaction amounts.
2021 transaction amounts pale in comparison to the activity observed in 2020. It can be concluded that there was more money being traded (specifically sold) by Senate Democrats.
Per Year
Per Month
April 2020 was a busy month for Senator Loeffler selling off stocks. This may be due to the March 2020 Department of Justice announcement opening an investigation into possible unusual trading by Senators earlier in the year. DoJ later dropped the investigation in May.
In 2021, relatively large stock sell offs by Senate Democrats happened. Specifically, Senator Ron Wyden’s family selling off tech stocks.
Sector Trades
When breaking the numbers down by sectors, it can be seen that finance, tech, retail and consumer services had the most activity in 2020. Senate Republicans appeared to favor tech trading a lot more than their House counterparts, who love oil and gas. More recently though, finance and tech (ie. AAPL, INTC) purchases have been popular for Senate Democrats. While ETFs and index funds appear to be popular for both Republican and Democratic Senators who trade this year. Note that the scale of these 2021 purchases in dollars is nowhere near 2020, which are dwarfed by comparison.
(In the following charts: “PST Services” refers to Professional, Scientific and Technical Services, and “NA” sector is mostly ETFs and index funds)
Check the appendix for interactive charts that further breakdown sector trades by month. Essentially, the largest sell offs in most sectors were by Republicans (read: Senator Loeffler) in March and April 2020.
Top 10 Picks
This section highlights the 10 hottest stocks chosen by Senators in 2020 and 2021 by sheer transaction amounts. It can be seen that the most popular tech and finance stocks belonged to some of the biggest companies in 2020. You can check individual candlestick charts for these tickers below.
Meanwhile 2021 has been a mixed bag with stock picks from Editas Medicine biotech (Senator Bill Hagerty) to KLA Corp semiconductor manufacturing (Senator Ron Wyden’s kid) to Liberty Media’s SPAC (Senator John Hickenlooper).
Who and how much?
Let’s break down trades by Senators and how much they purchased or sold, it can be concluded just how much Senator Loeffler’s trades make up in volume. Also to be clear, these trades weren’t made entirely by her husband; a lot were made jointly. Near the top of the list also include Senators Perdue, Blumenthal, Feinstein, Wyden and Roberts.
So far in 2021, Senator Wyden’s family have traded the most stocks (in April), followed by Senator Boozman mostly in ETFs, and then Senators Hickenlooper and Carper.
Who and how many?
Looking who made the most number of trades, it turn out Georgia’s former Senator David Perdue was busy in 2020, making well over 400+ trades. Note that he was defeated in the Georgia run-off elections in January 2021 by Senator Jon Ossoff.
In 2021, Senator Boozman has been busy trading ETFs and the odd company stock here and there, but again nowhere near the volume observed in 2021.
Here are some interactive heatmaps showing which sectors Senator made purchases (and how many) in 2020 and 2021.
You can hover over each blue square to see the number of trades made in which sector and which Senate Committees that Senator sat or currently sits on. You can zoom in too. Double click to reset!
Who knows what?
Often times, Congressmen and women trade in the industries they regulate and/or have access to non-public information. Let’s take a look at trades US Senators have made over the past year: from the highly controversial pandemic trades profiled in the news to the less known but still questionable.
You might have heard of these:
It’s been well noted what Senator Loeffler did following a Joint Health Committee meeting held on January 24, 2020. Basically between January 24 to March 11, 2020, she sold off up to $4.6M in stocks. This doesn’t even include her husband selling off approximately $18M in ICE stocks during this period.
In March 2020 alone, when the market was at its lowest, her family disclosed almost $4.5M in stocks purchased in sectors like finance, tech, manufacturing, oil and gas, energy and transportation.
Senator Loeffler has also been the only Senator to disclose options trades since 2020. She purchased a giant list of put options on April 7, 2020 (with expiry dates for mid/late-2020 and early 2021), which were all noted: “for [the] purpose of terminating existing options positions”. These were made following DoJ’s late-March announcement that they were investigating her aforementioned trading behaviour.
Link to spreadsheet: Link
Reminder: DoJ closed the investigation in May 2020. There were no ramifications of these actions.
Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband conveniently sold off up to $6M of Allogene Therapeutics stocks between January 31 and February 18, 2020… right before the 2020 stock market crash. She received scrutiny for these trades but denied any wrongdoing.
Senator James Inhofe sold up to $600k in stocks during this period (ie. BAM, C, DHR, INTU, AAPL, PYPL). No purchases.
And let’s not forget Senator Richard Burr, who’s been profiled in many articles already. And stepped down as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee to allow for the DoJ investigation to take place. He sold up to $1.8M in stocks on February 13, 2020. These stocks were in industries like tourism (resorts, hotels and restaurants), finance, manufacturing, and transportation.
How about these?
Senator Thomas Carper’s wife, a former DuPont executive, bought pandemic beneficiaries like DIS (+90% as of writing this), CVS (+35%), PEP (+21%), PYPL (+185%) in March and early April 2020. Hasn’t disclosed sales yet for any of these stocks. On April 2, 2020, she bought stocks in Quest Diagnostics Inc (DGX), a company that provides medical services like COVID-19 testing and has benefited from the pandemic. Quest announced a Consumer-Initiated COVID-19 Antibody Test on April 28, 2020. She’s gained +74% on DGX. More recently, on February 16, 2021, she purchased Intel stocks 8-days before Biden signed his semiconductor executive order (sitting at -5.2%). Sen Carper 15k BMY purchase also stands out as was bought RIGHT before BMY announced their share buy back, leading to a quick 10% gain (and the stock rallying from there). Carper also sold VRTS right before the stock's collapse before covid at a peak. Carper also expressed their trading abilities on 12/30 with a purchase in BMY and SBIO before a novel drug result was published, leading to the stock rallying. Here is more info on Carper
Senator Shelley Capito sat on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in 2020. Her spouse bought MSFT (+60%) and pharma/health stocks like JNJ (+25%) and ABT (+61%) on March 3, 2020. As you can see, all have made gains from the pandemic. Here's some more on Capito: She bought a ton of UNH 6 days before UNH's announced a 13 billion deal + an acquisition of Change Healthcare for $25.75 in Jan/Dec, leading to its stock rallying 37% on Jan 6. Capito was also a Savant with regards to XOM, selling the stock right before the XL pipeline news.
Senator Ron Wyden sat on a number of Senate committees in 2020 including (1) Budget, (2) Finance, (3) Intelligence, and (4) Energy and Natural Resources. His spouse traded stocks in Shell and Exxon in 2020. His family has also bought up to $685k in pandemic-themed stocks like DIS (+84%), AMZN (+67%), GOOG (+95%), PYPL (+131%) in April 2020.
Senator Pat Toomey mostly discloses his kid’s trades (in GME and TSLA). But one of the few buys of his own was AIV in November 2020 (+57% gains as of writing this). AIMCo is a real estate company that combines the development and redevelopment of apartment communities… He sat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in 2020.
Senator Pat Roberts did some great trading. He bought sold 50k of BA shares that coincided with the six month peak of BA. The company proceeded to lose 10% of its value over the next few months. One of the best trades EVER made by a Senator likely also came from Pat Roberts. He seemingly knew that $TSLA would have a split. The senator bought 100k of $TSLA pre split 08-03, and then sold fully on 09-01. He bought at $297 (split adjusted) and sold at $480, the local peak until Biden won the election months later and TSLA rallied past 600 again. In 29 days he received a 61% return, timing his TSLA entry pre split (amazing), and then selling at a peak (amazing).
On 07/09 he sold $15k $RMD, $APO, $OHThe whale (these are all covid related stocks). Two weeks later, $RMD drops 15% on vaccine news (no need for ventilators as RMD is a ventilator stock), $APO / $OHThe whale +10-20% over 3 months (on covid vaccine news). He seemingly knew covid stocks would get a hit, meaning he may have been privy to vaccine being released news slightly before others. He also showcased this with COST, buying Costco before the lockdowns were announced on 12/22 and stimulus news was released, at first sign of corona. Roberts has also been a savant with Plug, where he bought the stock numerous times in 15k increments, with him being up over 100% at peaks. Roberts also, the technical savy investor that he is, bought SQ on 12/22 before major federal reserve news saying they are not changing their buying programs. If you remember correctly, this lead to the amazing Jan-Feb 2021 rallies, making his 50k purchase return 14% at peaks. One more on Roberts, The whale promise. He also sold 100k of W (Wayfair) right before a 30% drop on 12/21! Here is a previous thread of me documenting some of his trades.
Senator John Boozman made 55 trades on January 22, 2021: he sold off around 35 company stocks totalling just over $500k and dumped that amount into ETFs and index funds. Perhaps a mad dash to avoid conflicts of interest for future Committees in the new session of Congress. Conveniently for him, January 26 hit the lowest the market’s been since the beginning of 2021. Note that this was during the height of GME + WSB saga and online discussions of hedge funds.
Senator David Perdue’s biggest stock purchases in February 2020 were for Pfizer, repeatedly buying into this pharmaceutical company only (and no other ones) for up to $260k. Just two weeks later, Pfizer announced they were working on a COVID-19 vaccine with BioNTech. Senator Perdue did not purchase any other pharma stocks in the month before or after, just PFE. He sold the majority of these on April 14, 2020 for a pretty $64k profit.
Senator Bill Cassidy sat on the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in 2020. He bought Johnson & Johnson (+25%) and 3M (+43%) on March 9, 2020. Trump was flirting with massive N95 mask orders from 3M during this period. Later that month, JNJ announced their lead COVID-19 vaccine candidate and new partnership with the US Department of Health & Human Services on March 30, 2020.
Estimating Returns
It may be helpful to estimate the level of returns Senators got since during the pandemic. This is challenging because we don’t have the whole picture of each Senator’s financial portfolio and only a small window into that from their disclosed 2020 and 2021 trades.
To make a best guess,the adjusted closing price of a stock has been used and the following assumptions have been made:
- When a stock is purchased, the next stock sale date to estimate % returns has been used. Additionally, the maximum investment amount to estimate the $ returned has been used as well.
- If a stock purchase and sale is reported on the same day, then assumed as an intra-day trade and could not estimate % returns using current methodology.
- If there was no sale date disclosed following stock purchases, then used the stock price on April 30, 2021 as a best guess of the asset’s value right now.
- Could not estimate the % returns for stock sales with no purchase dates disclosed. These stocks were purchased prior to 2020.
With these assumptions in mind, here’s what can be found. Since 2020, the Senate had an average return of 30.9% on 693 stock purchases. This translated to $65.4M purchased in stocks returning a total of $73.1M by April 30, 2021.
Doing the same method to guess returns on House trades, since 2020 House Members had an average return of 33.8% on 3,010 stock purchases. This translated to $139.9M returning a total of $171.7M by April 30, 2021.
Let’s summarize…
It can be concluded how questionable some trades are by Members of the House of Representatives. The trend continues in the Senate. And despite the 2012 STOCK Act being a thing, our Congressional members still likely abuse access to non-public information gained through their positions of power. The temptation is too great. In contrast to the House, Senate Republicans out-trade their Senate Democrat colleagues. Recently, these same Senate Republicans have stated that corporations should stay out of politics. But it should go both ways. The argument has been made that Congressional members should not have any financial stakes in the success or failure of specific companies (private or public). This is not unusualwhales.com's place to say. Instead, please read both reports and the data within and attempt to deduce how the public good is best served.
Unusual whales will continue to try to expose insider trading and questionable practices by those with power. Remember that together, we are whales.
Appendix
Here are the sector transactions by month as interactive heatmaps. You can hover over each blue square to see the number of trades made in which sector and which Senate Committees that Senator sat or currently sits on. You can zoom in too. Double click to reset!