Highlights from the last year of Congress trading, WallStreetBets discussion, insider trading, and much more
From the WallStreetBets explosion in January to the flurry of Congress trading this winter, there have been plenty of exciting developments over the last 12 months across Quiver's datasets.
As the year comes to an end, we want to review some of the highlights from our data in 2021. To start, here were the year's most visited stock pages on Quiver:
Unsurprisingly, Gamestop ($GME) took first place, followed by other notable favorites.
On a broader note, here are the top 7 most visited datasets on Quiver Quant this year:
Given this list, let's dig into the most popular datasets and highlight some of the most interesting data we saw throughout 2021.
r/WallStreetBets
12/28/21*
When analyzing the most-mentioned stocks on r/WallStreetBets, Gamestop($GME) took 1st place with over 354k mentions in 2021. WallStreetBets discussion chased (and sometimes preceded) high returns, as the average YTD ROI among the top 15 most mentioned stocks has been +139.4%.
Senate Trading
12/28/21*
U.S. Senators invested in a diverse array of stocks throughout 2021, with the average return of the top 15 most bought stocks being 35.11% YTD.
Interestingly, in 2021 Senators reported 465 stock sale transactions vs. just 272 stock buys, with the top 3 most bought industries shown below:
Banking and Financial stocks were the clear favorites among Senators for 2021, with the industry maintaining a 38.36% ROI YTD, the second-best performing industry behind energy which returned 58.05% YTD.
Senators Gary Peters, Mitch Mcconnell, and Ron Wyden were among the best performers, with the highest mean 180d returns on their stock purchases.
House Trading
12/28/21*
Among the top 15 most bought stocks by U.S. Representatives, Microsoft ($MSFT) was the clear favorite with U.S. Reps buying approximately $15.2m in Microsoft stock in 2021.
U.S. Representatives reported 2,491 stock purchase transactions, and 2,243 stock sales, a nearly perfect 50/50 'buy to sale' ratio. This is in stark contrast to U.S. Senators reporting far more stock sales than buys in their disclosures.
Nancy Pelosi, Earl Blumenauer, and Victoria Spartz were three of the top performers among U.S. House traders in 2021, all with over a 25% average 180d return on stock purchases.
Corporate Lobbying
12/28/21*
2021 marked a record in corporate lobbying expenditures as Silicon Valley tech companies increased their presence in Washington to address ongoing privacy laws, and visa application requirements.
Other notable lobbying expenditures include:
Qualcomm ($QCOM): Spending $1.48m to pass the CHIPS ACT which would aim to subsidize semi-conductor production and reduce supply chains bottle-necks.
Intuit Turbo Tax ($INTU): Spending $1.13m, potentially trying to keep tax filing complicated enough to retain its customers.
As suspected, the bulk of the spending went towards defense and aero-space contractors, with notable contracts including:
Boeing ($BA) receiving a $21.5 billion contract from NASA for a Guided Missile and Space Vehicle Manufacturing Program.
Lockheed Martin ($LMT) winning a $55 billion contract from NASA to develop an 'energy-saving performance program'.
Corporate Jet Flights
12/28/21*
Corporate Jet Flight activity also reached record levels as continued commercial flight disruptions pushed companies to seek alternative air-travel.
This said, the majority of companies above have a broad foot-presence requiring frequent flights to maintain operations. The companies with infrequent flights are more likely to reveal actionable information. One such example being Occidental Petroleum ($OXY) which in 2019 was spotted flying its corporate jet to Omaha, Nebraska. Days later Warren Buffet agreed to loan them $10b for a bidding war. (Full Story).
Insider Transactions
Company insiders sold a record $69 billion in stock 2021 YTD, with just 10 people making up 77% of the total stock sales reported.
While Elon Musk appeared to get the most publicity for his $13.9 billion in sales of Tesla ($TSLA) stock this year, The Walton Family sold a record $22 billion in Walmart ($WMT) stock this year alone.
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