Chief Representative David Trone (D-Md.) sold between $450,007 and $1 million in major U.S. bank bonds last month, shortly before the collapse of the second- and third-largest U.S. banks.According to a new filing, which marked his first financial reporting disclosure in nearly three years, S.’s story caused a stir in the country’s banking sector.
KEY FACTS
Trone sold fixed income securities from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo on February 16th.
It took about three weeks for confidence in the banking sector to plummet, with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank raising concerns about how big bank involvement in a race aimed primarily at regional banks might spread Infection.
The last time Trone — who sits on the Joint Congressional Economic Committee and the House Appropriations Committee — disclosed a sale or purchase of stock or bonds was on March 19, 2020, when he invested between $100,001 and $250,000 in Morgan Stanley -Bonds and sold between $50,001 and $100,000 in bank stocks.The
vast majorities” of Trone’s holdings are “floating bonds, notes and other fixed-term instruments, or ETFs and mutual fund-type securities,” Trone spokeswoman Sasha Galbreath said in an emailed statement to Forbes, adding that all fund managers are doing business on his behalf.
It’s not clear how much Trone made in February’s bond sale or how much the bonds would be worth now, but high inflation and interest rates weighed heavily on the bond market. It is possible that the newly disclosed sale was simply securities held to maturity and deposited on pre-arranged maturity dates, or that Trone’s fund manager acted on suspicions that the macroeconomic turmoil was further depreciating its assets and the bonds before expiry (or a combination of both).
KEY BACKGROUND
Trone was first elected to Congress in 2018 and made his fortune co-founding Total Wine & Spirits, the country’s self-proclaimed “largest independent fine wine retailer,” with sales of $5.5 billion in 2022.Quiver Quantitative, which tracks lawmakers’ investments, was the first to report on the recent sale of Trone. Members of Congress can trade in stocks, bonds, and other securities with minor restrictions, aside from being required to disclose such transactions. A 2022 New York Times poll found that nearly 20 percent of congressmen have personally bought or sold securities of companies that overlap with their legislative activities, or a close relative has done so (Trone was not involved in the report ).
WHAT TO WATCH
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced legislation barring members of Congress from negotiating individual stocks, though previous efforts in the House or Senate haven’t garnered much attention.
INCREDIBLE FACTS
Trone was one of 21 bipartisan members of Congress who sent a March 12 letter to key federal fiscal officials, urging the government to take action to ensure all Silicon Valley retail banks keep their recover deposits.The letter points to the impact of a troubled bond market on the collapse of the Silicon Valley bank: “With higher interest rates, the value of these government bonds and long-term mortgages has fallen.” Later that day, federal officials promised to guarantee all deposits at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, both of which failed two days later.