Jerome Powell's Insider Trading | The Fed.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
big issue in the news lately has been
stock trades by the federal reserve we
had a particular member i believe it was
richard clarida who
moved money from a bond fund to a stock
fund the day before an announcement by
the federal reserve elizabeth warren
made a similar move but not near one of
these catalyst states we've had other
broker or other members of the federal
reserve also
make moves in stock portfolios whether
it's to different funds or to uh to
different stocks or whatever we have
seen
such uh such drama
and what we have over here is uh now new
information that jerome powell may have
traded potentially up to a million
dollars right before a catalyst event
now drone powell so far has not been uh
part of uh sort of any uh
what's it called uh
you know scrutiny up until now and this
disclosure so let's uh let's see what
we've got here how big a deal is
powell's million dollar stock trade
there's no way that insider knowledge
would have helped jerome powell's one
stock trade in fact his timing was lousy
oh interesting john throws it all out
there in the summary so let's see what
we got here
uh let's see a journal of american
progressive left has published a piece
highlighting that jerome powell chairman
of the federal reserve sold between one
and five million in stock on october 1st
of last year he did so through a
vanguard fund that tracks the total
market how big of a deal is this kind of
also worth noting that the stock market
just barely
was getting out of the disaster of the
september sell-off last year around
october 1st and remember that we walked
basically right into the election drama
around i want to say it was week two and
three maybe it was even one through
three of october of last year that were
kind of a disaster right before the
election it was a perfect opportunity to
go shopping in stocks and took big
advantage of shopping and buying the dip
then
and it looks like jerome powell kind of
bought before that so let's see here
the full disclosure can be found here
thank you very much let's go ahead and
look at the full disclosure so there it
is jay pow i certify the statements are
true and correct and so what do we got
here
we have
t row price equity index
value okay these are these are just the
assets that we have so he's got about 1
to 500 500 000 to 100 or to 1 million
dollars in a t row price essentially
something that tracks the s p 500
another one to five million dollars in
an s p 500 blackrock index and then a
spider index 100 to 250 000. so he's
pretty much all in on spy
kind of interesting spouses uh
employment
video production here value not readily
accessible okay so where are the moves
here
let's see for these are other assets
that he has i'm surprised i thought
jerome powell would have a whole bunch
more assets to put on his disclosure
here a lot of these are
smaller sort of individual bonds that
he's got here 2500 to 5 000
relatively
small numbers
for jay powell in my opinion
then here we go mutual life insurance
cash value 100 to one mill okay vanguard
total stock market index fund a million
to five here we go here's where the
larger numbers are
uh i shares rush russell 3000 15 000 to
fifty thousand
and here we go transactions so really
the transaction that was most
interesting was right here
the sale what
he sold the vanguard total stock market
index on october 1st
uh between 1 million and 500 000 sorry 1
million and 5 million dollars worth why
would he sell
that's interesting so he actually
sold a chunk here october 1st
it doesn't look like he rebought based
on this oh here we go what is this
oh here was here was some buying and he
didn't no this is a sale as well
that is interesting we don't actually
get dates for some of these other
purchases which are kind of annoying we
have all these endnotes that we'd have
to go through to find them
uh that's not so ideal and in fact i
don't even know what's the footnote here
i don't even know that we're gonna get
dates
see none of these have actual dates just
says see endnote
that's
quite interesting
so gifts and travel reimbursements
liabilities
transactions
okay the section does not include things
having to do with personal residence
treasury bonds things like this okay got
it it's not a big deal
other disciples there's nothing on the
dates for the purchases so it's a little
kind of odd that you would see um
oh and he closed his life insurance
policy in 2020 lots of liquidating but
anyway so i wonder if he bought a big
house or something like that liquidated
or something like that that would be
interesting but why would you sell
october 1st
uh
and
september 21st i agree i think this
timing's actually pretty lame
where are your buys man i mean you got
all these smaller purchases here but
there is no big purchase here
that's very odd jay pal paper handed did
he buy a house let's see jerome powell
purchase house let's just see
uh okay oh
thank you safari jerome powell purchases
house
see if he did
no
there's really no talk about him
purchasing you think that that would be
news if he bought a house right so he
didn't buy a house i wonder what he did
with his money let's see what the
opinion article makes uh makes of this
before we get we're still waiting on
united earnings by the way it looks like
fed chairperson a rich man from his
career in private equity holds an
impeccably dull investment portfolio i
kind of agree like
i'm shocked it's not that large
it's smaller than expected apparently he
got out earlier than expected
uh
you know virtually all passive and
spread across asset classes does not
appear to have done much trading barely
small purchases and a sale that looks
like it's either rebalancing or some
sort of
income to reinvest yeah it's odd one big
trade was on october 1st
it uh covered the whole market so no
inside knowledge of particular sectors
would have helped
yeah this is when the trade occurred
right here and the market
took off like 33 since then so very odd
sale
lousy timing completely agree with that
35 percent gain on on a good chunk of
money
so he's already publicly addressed his
intentions in august and september of
that year
yeah he should have been keen to buy and
not sell no kidding
the american prospect this is that
left-leaning group the liberal group
they put together a narrative that makes
the transaction seem more sinister i
don't know i'm looking at the
disclosures and having been in this
market every single day here
this seems stupid yeah man
there you go j pal sold and got all in
on btc in ethereum
now he would have to disclose that so
unless he's not disclosing it which i'm
not suggesting things couldn't be hidden
he would have to disclose that as an
asset
that's a that would be absolutely
hilarious could you imagine if jerome
powell liquidated his stocks and went
all in on crypto oh my gosh that would
be the funniest thing ever
uh fox business popular with
conservatives followed the story and
headlined jay powell sold up to 5
million in stock in 2020 before market
tanked
um
that i don't think so
i don't think so
uh maybe yeah they're referencing maybe
the little bit of wobbling before the
election that's nonsense so it looks
like the left group is nonsense fox news
was nonsense on this headline sounds
like the media is just being dumb as
usual
the real issue here uh is the the fed
officials have to be worried about
conflicts of interest powell whether it
needs to be reappointed or not blah blah
blah
uh
i see
i just want to know where the money went
honestly i i want to know where the
money went
did he go cash heavy i mean that's
i mean you'd think it would
it would show something i mean well then
again you don't have to show purchases
you would have to show assets
so maybe does he show assets yeah cash i
think he went to cash
oh my gosh
why
that's the only thing that makes sense
because otherwise he would have had to
show on a purchase so he probably went
to cash for some reason you know he's
probably just
i mean he's never professed to be a
trader i mean don't get me wrong like i
i like jay pal but yeah he's got he's
got a bunch of money sitting around in
cash
uh i i don't you know he doesn't have to
disclose a purchase for cash
and there there are no purchases here
under transactions for anything close to
that amount i mean you've got some money
maybe here 50 to 100 000
but again you had more sales over here
he sold a bunch of stuff in 2020. i
think he cashed out he's just like f it
you know that's that's about the extent
that i could see this
and
do i think it was sinister not really
if anything it was stupid
but then again hey maybe for his own
peace of mind he's just like look i i
can't take it anymore like it's too
stressful we've rebounded a good amount
i just i want to get ready to
potentially retire i'm just gonna sit on
some cash that's the only thing that i
could really expect here uh and so
you know in my opinion
i don't necessarily see anything wrong
with this i think this is probably a
personal decision for jay pal and uh i'm
not gonna complain about it like uh fox
or that liberal left group that uh
implied it was sinister
it's just my thoughts just my two cents
on it all right
anyway that's j pal four yet
[Music]
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