Taegan Goddard's Political Wire

October 24, 2005

Capitol Gains

With Sen. Bill Frist's (R-TN) personal investments under investigation by the SEC, the New Yorker reviews "the first-ever systematic study of politicians as investors." The study analyzed "six thousand stock transactions made by senators between 1993 and 1998" and found that, "over that time, senators beat the market, on average, by twelve per cent annually. Since a mutual-fund manager who beats the market by two or three per cent a year is considered a genius, the politiciansí ability to foresee the future seems practically divine. They did an especially good job of picking up stocks at just the right time; their buys were typically flat before they bought them, but beat the market by thirty per cent, on average, in the year after."

The researchers conclude the senators must have traded on information unavailable to the public; "in other words, they were engaged in some form of insider trading."

Earlier: The Wall Street Journal reviewed the same study late last year. "The researchers say senators' uncanny ability to know when to buy or sell their shares seems to stem from having access to information that other investors wouldn't have."

Meanwhile, while it's unclear Frist has a legal problem, a Washington Post piece indicates he has a real political problem since the trust he claimed was blind really wasn't.

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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