OT: I'd be fine with a law that made Senators and Representatives count as a 10% shareholder for any public company whose stock they own and so subjecting them to rule 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.<p>That rule, which applies to officers, directors, and 10% shareholders of public companies, makes it so that any "short swing" profits from trades have to be given to the company. A "short swing" profit is profit from buying and selling shares of the company, or from selling and buying shares of the company, if the buying and the selling is less than six months apart.<p>The idea is that officers, directors, and big shareholders should be thinking about the long term good of the company rather than concentrating on short term swings in stock value that they might immediately personally profit from.<p>16(b) enforcement is brilliant. The people it applies to are the same people that are required to publicly disclose trades, and if you violate it any other shareholder has standing to sue to require you to give the profits to the company. Furthermore, to get that standing they only have to be a shareholder when they file suit, <i>not</i> when the violation occurred. Finally, if they win not only do you have to disgorge your short swing profits, you have to pay the plaintiff's attorney fees.<p>And so the SEC doesn't have to lift a finger to enforce it. There are attorneys who get the public disclosure data and look for violations, then buy a share of stock in the company and sue.<p>Even worse from the violator's point of view: if there is more than one purchase or sale of stock in a six month period, they just match up the highest sale price with the lowest purchase, then the second highest sale price with the second lowest, and so on, regardless of order.<p>For example, if you bought at 100, a month later sold at 90, a month later bought at 80, and a month later sold at 70, you have in reality lost 20. But you've got a 10 short swing profit from that buy at 80, sell at 90, which is all 16(b) cares about.