They could even do the sort of things corporate execs at publicly traded companies do, and fill out forms well in advance about future investment purchases, to avoid the ability to time purchases to inside information.
Fine. People motivated by money should take jobs other than sitting in Congress.
I am skeptical of an arrangement where those incentives are at odds with care for critical infrastructure like our political process.
That being said, the current arrangement makes it vastly more profitable to destabilize the economy and sell short than stabilize it and buy long, which is clearly unacceptable to me.
That's not very much in DC. Or most places really.
Isn't the solution to needing two homes to do the job for the government to provide that as a work expense rather than permitting funky financial hijinks?
https://www.quiverquant.com/congresstrading/politician/Nancy...
If we're gonna give this actual attention, we should be focusing on the fact that they should be banned from any form of insider trading or major conflict of interest!
I think this in the previous comment undervalue just how many more complicated ways there are for corruption to bubble.
Assume super strict rules. Consider this example to circumvent them: Senator-elect A makes an LLC and invest their money (with some friends) in it (before taking office)
They can’t even talk to the money manager. But the manager can see their actions, and the senator can know their ow investments and work in their favor.
Are senators not allow to buy any commodities futures now (it reads like it)?
¹I, and I think most reasonable people, think this is ridiculous - it’s obviously gambling in a trenchcoat, but that’s what they claim…
https://www.moreno.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/FIL...
>No Member of the Senate may enter into, or offer to enter into, an agreement, contract, or transaction that provides for any purchase, sale, payment, or delivery that is dependent on the occurrence, nonoccurrence, or the extent of the occurrence of a specific event.
Kind of seems like Senators would now be barred from like getting home or life insurance and certain kinds of casino gambling. Or like, making an offer on a home that is rescindable upon a failed inspection?
Edit: I guess that’s not dependent on a ‘specific’ future event.
what you're saying is probably on the mind of at least one Senator, but all things considered, this feels like a net-positive move which they didn't have to do.
when something you think is bad gets better but not better enough, say "more please"
AWS’s massive outage lead to a significant jump in the stock price.
No single grunt level employee has the power to affect any large company’s share price.
There's an obvious opportunity to use insider information or insider influence to create a particular outcome on Kalshi. Like I could trade on the likelihood of a power outage in my city tomorrow or the next day and then in order to make good on the "trade" I could just drive a vehicle into the substation. Or I could do something more insidious. But the fact that my incentives are aligned by Kalshi with me blowing up a power substation means that Kalshi is a net negative even though individuals could make money from it.
There's a difference between betting on the outcome of an event and investing in a company, although companies like Kalshi and Polymarket like to try to erase that difference. Investments are all notionally conditioned on a company meeting performance goals, and that incentive is aligned with the desire of company employees to also meet performance goals. Companies also generally align around some kind of useful output like washing machines or clothing which are beneficial in some way. What is useful about betting on the color of the sky at sunset in Lisbon on September 28th?
Prediction markets are useful in their own right because they help people plan with information independent of themselves and more accurate and less biased than other sources. That is very similar to a market allocating a societies future allocations through rewarding holding of past investments. Both actually have many of the same problems and elimination of either can not prevent insider trading on information or significant resources being wasted on zero sum game aspects or faults in how such simple systems of reward function layers allocate as well.
(If you plan to propose to a partner in September might it not be helpful to have an opinion about the night of the 28th? Is that more or less important than the OTC penny stock for a probably defunct mine that possibly has copper? But why not pick equivalent strong points. If you are planning purchase like a next auto might you find future energy market related bets helpful to estimating long term risks for your choice?)
*typo
Until they do...
Avoiding insider trading on prediction markets seems like an intractable problem to me.
This is going to ruin interesting conversations at their holiday dinners!
Still, it is something. Some chilling effect is better than none. While we do this, it is worthwhile to make prediction markets accessible to our opponents. Ideally, those in corrupt countries aligned against us should be leaking as much information through the markets to us and we should enrich them for it. I'd love to have this kind of distributed espionage with the largest number of bets being on the actions of those aligned against us.
For example, if you are a company whose current business would be severely hurt if a particular piece of legislation passes, it might make sense to hedge that risk by placing a bet on a prediction market that the legislation will pass. That way, if your business is hurt by the legislation, you can use the proceeds to offset the harm and pivot to something else.
Of course, that doesn’t explain most prediction market contracts, but that is the idea at least.
The prediction market CEOs on the other hand seem to be actively encouraging insider trading and match fixing, it's practically their main selling point.
Maybe they didn't need more uncertainty in their portfolios.
There’s like 2 famous exceptions, other than those they are simply abysmal traders because their information isn’t worth very much. This problem is so overstated, it’s popular because it’s vaguely populist and exhibits an anti elite sentiment
Emphasis mine. This does not cover the judicial or executive branch
https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/716
Both for Senators and Representatives:
- Term limits (2 consecutive terms max) - No stock market participation in any form during office - No corporate or PAC contributions - Prison for lying to the public or during the course of their work (hearings, media, etc.) - Serious legal consequences for defamation or libel - No special medical/healthcare insurance, accounts or treatment - Pensions only bases on their own contributions, nothing else - No lifetime pensions or healthcare - This one is tough: Consequences for campaign promises not met (part of no lies) - Consequences for shutting down government - Serious consequences for not balancing the budget or driving meaningful reductions that will result in a balanced budget in short order - No media-related jobs for five years after leaving office - No book deals for five years after leaving office - No movie deals for five years after leaving office - No fancy office anything that costs more than your average Ikea/Walmart office furniture - Severe consequences for illicit enrichment; a bartender cannot come out of Congress a multi-millionaire, period.
In other words, like any real job by average citizens. They should not be a privileged and protected class.