If you've listened to me at all, there's a really, really good chance that you know I'm particularly not a fan of politicians trading. It is crazy to me my own personal opinion that this can happen because they may have access to nonpublic information. It's gotten to the point that it's it's a meme of just how good politicians are at trading. And I know sometimes it can get frustrating to think about what they're doing while a lot of the average people like you and me are feeling a bit of the pinch.

And it's on that exact point that I finally have what I think many of us would consider to be a positive update just in: Former: US Congressman Stephen Byer Sentenced to 1.8 years in prison for insider trading. Finally, finally, finally, finally something has happened that probably should have been happening a while ago now. Obviously I'm no lawyer I don't speak legales I'm not sitting here saying every single politician is a political Insider traitor, but clearly some of them are and that's the name of one right here. Former Congressman sentenced to nearly 2 years in prison for insider trading Steven Byer Republican Who represented an Indiana District was convicted in March of insider trading related to his Consulting work.

A former Republican lawmaker who served in Congress for nearly two decades was sentenced Tuesday to almost 2 years in prison over insider trading charges. Former Representative Steven Byer Was sentenced to 22 months in prison stemming from four counts of Securities fraud related to a pair of insider trading schemes in 2018 and 2019 by who is 64. Was elected to Congress in 1993. He left in 2011 to work as a consultant to private companies.

We've discussed this before, but the revolving door of like federal government work to the private sector back and forth, seemingly happening all the time. Us Attorney Damen Williams said that buyer abused positions of trust for elicit personal gain and today he faced Justice For Those acts Buyer misappropriated material non-public information that he learned as a consultant and use that information to quote unquote Place timely, profitable security trades in broker accounts in his own name and in the names of others. Prosecutors said that buyer bought shares of Sprint stock ahead of a 26.5 billion merger announcement with T-Mobile in 2018 and a separate scheme in 2019. They alleged that he also traded shares of Navigant Consulting before it was acquired by Guide Housee a Consulting and advisory firm.

Buyer made more than 126,000 from buying and later selling Sprint stock and made more than 223,000 from the Navigant trade. You know it's not often that we get to do it, but I think we should give a little bit of a round of applause to our regulators and our watch songs that finally something was done here. Now with that being said, would I argue that this is a progressive step in the right direction 100% And because of that I want to call out a couple things that maybe we should be paying attention to in the short term. just in US Senator: Bob Menendez Accepted bribes in gold bars worth up to 400,000 in exchange for help with a criminal case according to Federal prosecutors.

So this is their claim. What will come of it I Don't know but a story I'm definitely paying attention to 400k in gold bars. Absolutely ridiculous and that's not the only one that is currently will say peing my own interest this is Dan Sullivan Mr Sullivan is a US senator for Alaska so that probably means that not many of us really know him unless you're from Alaska and then this is your guy. The reason I'm bringing up Mr Sullivan is because of his most recently reported trades periodic transaction report and this was posted on September 18th and it's basically a lot of Trades that he ended up making in late August of 2023.

But as you can see selling, selling, selling selling selling we're selling. We're selling, We're selling, We're selling, We're selling, We're selling, We're selling. If you had this all up, it almost adds up to a million of selling. Now, if you take a deep dive into his recent activity, this is abnormal.

This is clearly abnormal for him to hit the rip cord on everything and I think it's fair for you to then ask why is he possibly doing it I think it's a very fair question now. obviously all these transaction dates, this is when it actually happened. In the future, we'll be able to know if this was a pretty timely, shrewd trade or maybe it was luck I Don't know what it is, but it definitely, at a minimum, is curious to me now. Obviously, this is frustrating for a lot of us to know that our elected officials who might have access to non-public information can freely trade in the market.

I Know there's a lot of people like you and me who think that this shouldn't be able to happen. And yes, I will campaign for this to end, because to me, in my eyes, it's an absolutely ridiculous process. Now, if you want to track what our politicians are buying and selling, there's many websites that do that, but my particular favorite one is Streetbeat. So Streetbeat is a robo advisor and it has various AI trading co-pilots for those of you who are curious.

Yes, you can buy and sell stock and they don't accept payment for order flow. But what I want to bring your attention to is specifically one of their co-pilots US Congress Buys Now obviously they have other ones they have generative. AI Congress Buys House buys top government contracts Bond Letter growth bonds. but my personal favorite is right here: US Congress Buys This portfolio tracks the performance of stocks that have been purchased by members of US Congress or their family.

This portfolio is weighted based on reported size of the purchases with daily rebalancing. So what does that mean? It basically means whatever in aggregate our politicians are buying, you could be buying and whatever they're selling, you could be selling. So it's kind of I guess of the Mantra of, well, if you can't beat them, join them. And while we're all patiently waiting around for regulations to get to a level that I would truly believe most of us would be happy with.

to the point that they can't actively be trading in the market while they hold a position while we're waiting for that to happen at least, Maybe in a general sense, the general populace can be some Watchdogs tracking what our elected officials are doing. Because if you ask me, as I've said many, many times before and I will continue to shout from the rooftops, it is truly ridiculous. So if you want to check it out and if you want to trade alongside our elected officials, you could buy what they're buying. you can sell what they're selling.

Make sure you check out Street Be.