IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/26975.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Relief Rally: Senators As Feckless As the Rest of Us at Stock Picking

Author

Listed:
  • William Belmont
  • Bruce Sacerdote
  • Ranjan Sehgal
  • Ian Van Hoek

Abstract

We examine the stock trading behavior and returns of U.S. senators from 2012-March 2020. Stocks purchased by senators on average slightly underperform stocks in the same industry and size (market cap) categories by 11 basis points, 28 basis points and 17 basis points at the 1, 3, and 6-month time horizons. Stocks sold by senators underperform slightly for the first three months and then outperform slightly (a statistically insignificant 14 basis points) at the one year mark. We find no evidence that senators have industry specific stock picking ability related to their committee assignments. Neither Republican nor Democratic senators are skilled at picking stocks to buy, while stocks sold by Republican senators underperform by 50 basis points over three months. Stocks sold following the January 24th COVID-19 briefing do underperform the market by a statistically significant 9 percent while stocks purchased during this period underperform by 3 percent. Our findings contrast somewhat with recent news reports and studies of pre-STOCK Act (2012) returns, though are consistent with Eggers and Hainmueller (2013).

Suggested Citation

  • William Belmont & Bruce Sacerdote & Ranjan Sehgal & Ian Van Hoek, 2020. "Relief Rally: Senators As Feckless As the Rest of Us at Stock Picking," NBER Working Papers 26975, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26975
    Note: AP POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w26975.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel, Kent, et al, 1997. "Measuring Mutual Fund Performance with Characteristic-Based Benchmarks," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 1035-1058, July.
    2. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    3. Ziobrowski Alan J & Boyd James W & Cheng Ping & Ziobrowski Brigitte J., 2011. "Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-24, April.
    4. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    5. Ziobrowski, Alan J. & Cheng, Ping & Boyd, James W. & Ziobrowski, Brigitte J., 2004. "Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 661-676, December.
    6. Tahoun, Ahmed, 2014. "The role of stock ownership by US members of Congress on the market for political favors," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(1), pages 86-110.
    7. Ziobrowski, Alan J. & Boyd, James W. & Cheng, Ping & Ziobrowski, Brigitte J., 2011. "Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 1-22, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jan Hanousek & Hoje Jo & Christos Pantzalis & Jung Chul Park, 2023. "A Dilemma of Self-interest vs. Ethical Responsibilities in Political Insider Trading," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 137-167, September.
    2. Serkan Karadas & Minh Tam Tammy Schlosky & Joshua Hall, 2021. "Did Politicians Use Non-Public Macroeconomic Information in Their Stock Trades? Evidence from the STOCK Act of 2012," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Serkan Karadas, 2019. "Trading on Private Information: Evidence from Members of Congress," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 54(1), pages 85-131, February.
    2. Cohen, Lauren & Diether, Karl & Malloy, Christopher, 2013. "Legislating stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 574-595.
    3. Stephan, Andrew P. & Walther, Beverly R. & Wellman, Laura A., 2021. "Profiting from connections: Do politicians receive stock tips from brokerage houses?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1).
    4. Belmont, William & Sacerdote, Bruce & Sehgal, Ranjan & Van Hoek, Ian, 2022. "Do senators and house members beat the stock market? Evidence from the STOCK Act," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    5. Ahmed Tahoun & Laurence van Lent, 2016. "The Personal Wealth Interests of Politicians and the Stabilization of Financial Markets," Working Papers Series 52, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    6. Serkan Karadas, 2018. "Family ties and informed trading: evidence from Capitol Hill," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 42(2), pages 211-248, April.
    7. Yongqiang Chu & Weida Kuang & Daxuan Zhao & Xiaoxia Zhou, 2024. "Inside job: Evidence from the Chinese housing market," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(1), pages 214-233, January.
    8. Po-Hsuan Hsu & Dongmei Li & Qin Li & Siew Hong Teoh & Kevin Tseng, 2022. "Valuation of New Trademarks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(1), pages 257-279, January.
    9. Kee-Hong Bae & Junesuh Yi, 2008. "The Impact of the Short-Short Rule Repeal on the Timing Ability of Mutual Funds," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(7-8), pages 969-997.
    10. Linnenluecke, Martina K. & Chen, Xiaoyan & Ling, Xin & Smith, Tom & Zhu, Yushu, 2017. "Research in finance: A review of influential publications and a research agenda," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 188-199.
    11. Detzel, F. Larry & Weigand, Robert A., 1998. "Explaining Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 45-55.
    12. repec:hal:journl:dumas-00934738 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Chen, Li-Wen & Adams, Andrew & Taffler, Richard, 2013. "What style-timing skills do mutual fund “stars” possess?," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 21(C), pages 156-173.
    14. Wermers, Russ & Yao, Tong & Zhao, Jane, 2007. "The investment value of mutual fund portfolio disclosure," CFR Working Papers 06-09, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    15. Shiyang Huang & Xin Liu & Dong Lou & Christopher Polk, 2024. "The Booms and Busts of Beta Arbitrage," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(8), pages 5367-5385, August.
    16. Paul A. Gompers & Andrew Metrick, 2001. "Institutional Investors and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 229-259.
    17. Christopher Knittel & Jeffrey Heisler & John J. Neumann & Scott Stewart, 2004. "Why Do Institutional Plan Sponsors Hire and Fire their Investment Managers?," Working Papers 1, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    18. Daniel Buncic & Jon E. Eggins & Robert J. Hill & David Gallagher, 2015. "Measuring fund style, performance and activity: a new style-profiling approach," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 55(1), pages 29-55, March.
    19. Lauren Cohen & Karl B. Diether & Christopher J. Malloy, 2007. "Supply and Demand Shifts in the Shorting Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2061-2096, October.
    20. Feng, Xunan & Johansson, Anders C. & Zhang, Tianyu, 2015. "Mixing business with politics: Political participation by entrepreneurs in China," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 220-235.
    21. Pantzalis, Christos & Park, Jung Chul, 2014. "Exuberance out of left field: Do sports results cause investors to take their eyes off the ball?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 760-780.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G0 - Financial Economics - - General
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26975. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.