Largely thanks to the efforts of the online investor community, interesting, suspicious, and conveniently timed trades made by elected officials in the U.S. have come under increased scrutiny in recent years.
Whether it is the now-famous trades of the Pelosis’, or apparent oddities like the chairman of the House Ethics Committee buying gambling stocks, the calls to restrict Congressional trading have only grown louder.
Still, despite bipartisan support and renewed calls for a vote on it, the “Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act” remains unpassed.
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Last month, Senator Tina Smith, a member of the Senate Committees on Health, made two interesting investments in relatively small health stocks – Tactile Systems Technology (NASDAQ: TCDM) and Artivion (NYSE: AORT).
Senator Smith’s profitable trades
Since making her investments in the two companies – $250,000 in tactile systems and $200,000 in Artivion – Senator Smith is up 28% and 29%, respectively, on her trades, according to an X post by Quiver Quantitative.
The trades are considered suspicious for several reasons. Both companies entered into significant rallies right after the Senator made her investment – with both breaking a relatively long downtrend at the same time.
Additionally, both companies are rather small compared to the firms U.S. representatives usually trade with Tactile Systems, having a market cap of just over $300 million and Artivion of about $760 million.
Finally, not only are both companies operating in the health industry – with Senator Smith sitting on the Senate Committees on Health – but Tactile Systems is also based in her home state of Minnesota and has received multiple government contracts worth millions despite its relatively small size.
TCDM price analysis
Tactile Systems has been having a fairly volatile year, experiencing a rally in the first half of the year that ended relatively abruptly in August. TCDM, however, started rising again in early November – soon after Senator Smith made her investment – and is up 20.65% in the last 30 days. At the time of publication, the stock was trading at $12.97.
AORT price analysis
AORT’s performance in 2023 followed a very similar pattern to that of Tactile Systems. The key difference is that the company ended its Spring and Summer uptrend in October – its drop being significantly sharper – and started recovering only in late November – again near the time Smith made her purchase.
It is noteworthy that the Senator made her investment in AORT shortly after the stock started rallying, and Artivion is up a total of 36.18% in the last 30 days. During Tuesday trading, the latest full trading day at the time of publication, the company’s stock rose 2.38% to $18.48. It is, however, surging in the pre-market and is up another 5.57% at the time of writing.
