While some lawmakers in the United States continue to try to put a stop to politicians using the information attained through their positions to gain unfair advantage in stock trades, others seem to continue stock trading unbothered, including Representative Earl Leroy ‘Buddy’ Carter.
Specifically, Carter has recently reported a massive sale of stocks of Ameris Bancorp (NYSE: ABCB), a bank holding company from Atlanta, Georgia, in a sale worth about $1 million, according to the data shared by the stock trade tracking platform Insider Tracker in an X post on July 29.
As the platform’s team explained, Carter’s Ameris Bancorp stock trading is interesting because the sale happened “just days before Ameris released their earnings report,” its headquarters are in his home state of Georgia, and “no other politician has traded this stock this year.”.
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However, considering the fact that he could have benefitted substantially from the post-earnings ABCB spike of 3% had he held onto his shares but sold them before the earnings suggests a possible desire to avoid risk rather than insider knowledge, especially taking into account the thin trading activity of this stock.
Politicians’ questionable stock trades
At the same time, Insider Tracker noted Carter’s “history of questionable transactions, which makes this one all the more interesting.” Indeed, earlier this month, the platform listed the Georgian Representative as one of the four politicians violating the STOCK Act, i.e., failing to report stock trades within 45 days.
As they pointed out, the only punishment for these politicians, who, alongside Carter who was 301 days late with his filing, include Brandon Williams (517 days), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (196 days), and Max Miller (539 days), was a $200 fine, suggesting “accountability is the least traded stock in Congress.”
It is worth noting that politician stock trades have been in the limelight for some time now, particularly due to the exceptionally profitable trading by Nancy Pelosi, a former House Speaker, leader of the House Democrats for 20 years, and one of the most active stock traders among U.S. politicians.
For instance, Finbold reported in early May that Pelosi profited a whopping $2.6 million in a single day from her holdings, including in companies like Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
ABCB stock price analysis
Meanwhile, the price of Ameris Bancorp shares at press time stood at $61, recording a 4% decline on the day but still holding onto the 1.38% advance across the week, an accumulated gain of 21.20% on its monthly chart, as well as advancing 16.97% since the year’s turn, per data on July 30.
All things considered, it seems that Carter might have missed his chance to benefit more from the ABCB stock surge following the company’s positive earnings report and subsequent share price surge. That said, he sold his ABCB shares at an average price of $59.3, which has still brought him substantial profit.
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