Trump's oil and gas stocks went up fifteen million dollars during a war with Iran. Congressional Democrats found this suspicious. They released a statement. They implied wrongdoing. They forgot how stocks work.
Oil prices rise during Middle East conflicts. This has happened every time since 1973. Energy stocks follow oil prices. A man who owns energy stocks sees those stocks increase in value when oil increases in value. Democrats call this insider trading. The rest of us call it owning things.
The beautiful part is the threat. If Democrats retake either chamber in the midterms, Trump's stock trading could face heightened congressional scrutiny. Not actual consequences. Not charges. Scrutiny. They will scrutinize very hard. They will furrow their brows. They will write strongly worded letters on official letterhead. They will leak those letters to friendly reporters who will write breathless articles about potential maybe possible theoretical violations of norms.
Retail traders read these headlines and panic-sell their portfolios. They think the whole market is rigged. They are correct about that but wrong about why. The market is not rigged because politicians own stocks that go up during predictable geopolitical events. The market is rigged because you are stupid enough to sell every time you read a headline with the word "congressional" in it.
Meanwhile some guy in Greenwich bought oil futures three weeks before the Iran story broke. He made forty million dollars. Nobody wrote a press release about him. He does not do cable news interviews. He bought a third house and moved on with his life.
Congressional scrutiny remains the only investment vehicle with a guaranteed negative return.
Photo by sina drakhshani on Unsplash
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