There has been a lot of talk about highly successful – and often suspiciously successful – stock market trades made by U.S. elected officials.
Looking at the profits of various members of Congress, this is hardly surprising as, for example, Representative Brian Higgins had a return on investment higher than 200% in 2023, while Representative Nancy Pelosi made ten times her annual salary within four months on a single stock.
Still, not all Congresspeople have the same uncanny talent – or uncanny access to insider information as some, including the “Wolf of Wall Street” Jordan Belfort would suggest – and Democrat Shri Thanedar, representing Michigan’s 13th congressional district, might have recently made the worst-timed trade of 2024 out of all his peers.
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Representative Thanedar’s ill-timed trade
Representative Shri Thanedar went on a selling spree on January 23 and 25, 2024, and offloaded stocks of a wide variety of companies, including well-known technology giants like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), electric vehicle (EV) household names like Elon Musk’s Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), and retail blue-chips like Walmart (NYSE: WMT).
While the stock sales are interesting in their own right, with some being exceptionally well-timed and others rallying shortly after Congressman Thanedar sold, the most interesting – and unfortunate – trades came a few days later on February 5.
Early in the second month of the year, the Representative sold up to $50,000 worth of Litecoin (LTC), up to $250,000 worth of Ethereum (ETH), and up to $500,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC).
Since the trade, BTC rose 55.98%, LTC 33.65%, and ETH 61.03%.
On the high end, this means that Congressman Thanedar lost out on $452,000 by selling $800,000 worth of cryptocurrency on the high end and $208,000 on the low end by selling $365,000.
Why is the crypto market rallying?
What makes Representative Thanedar’s trade timing particularly strange is that it came shortly after a brief and severe crypto market wipe in the wake of the approval of nine spot BTC exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. and shortly before the ongoing bull run that has seen many coins and tokens surge to multi-year highs – with the performance of Ethereum, meme coins, and Bitcoin being particularly noteworthy.
Indeed, at the time of publication, BTC is engaged in a struggle to reach and breach its all-time high near $69,000.
Since the start of the year, the coin has risen 50.63%, and the last 30 days of trading have been particularly interesting, with Bitcoin rapidly surging 55.98%.
The latest full day on the crypto market, however, highlights that despite the momentum, the ecstatic attitude of the community, and the euphoria driven by the upcoming halving event, $69,000 is a hard level to reach, and Bitcoin retraced to $66,445 after briefly touching above $68,500 within the 24 hour period.
Disclaimer: The content on this site should not be considered investment advice. Investing is speculative. When investing, your capital is at risk.
