u/Tkn665

Rep. Josh Gottheimer bought NetEase (Chinese tech) while simultaneously authoring legislation to ban TikTok and DeepSeek over CCP ties. He sits on the Intelligence Committee as Ranking Member of the NSA & Cyber Subcommittee. He decides which Chinese tech companies are national security threats. NetEase isn't on his list.

The timeline:

• October 17, 2025: Gottheimer buys NTES ($1,001-$15,000). Weeks later, the US and China finalize a one-year tariff extension through November 2026. Chinese stocks rally. NetEase jumps on the news as reduced trade barriers directly benefit its global gaming distribution.
• February 3, 2026: Gottheimer leads a letter demanding President Trump crack down on CCP-linked tech companies TikTok and DeepSeek. He calls the CCP a threat that "will exploit any tool at its disposal to undermine our national security." He is long a Chinese tech stock while writing this.
• March 5, 2026: Gottheimer sells NTES ($1,001-$15,000).
• March 20, 2026: Gottheimer sits in a classified Intelligence Committee hearing on the 2026 Worldwide Threats Assessment. He presses officials on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, and global economic disruption.
• April 6, 2026: Gottheimer buys NTES again at ~$112.63 ($1,001-$15,000). The stock is 25% below its 52-week high. 31 analysts rate it Strong Buy with a $162 target, roughly 40% upside from his entry.
• May 19, 2026: Trade disclosed. 43 days after execution. The STOCK Act allows 45. Two days before NetEase's Q1 2026 earnings call.
• May 21, 2026: NetEase reports Q1 2026 earnings.

Why this matters: Gottheimer holds dual seats on Intelligence and Financial Services. On Intelligence, he gets classified briefings on Chinese technology threats and knows exactly which companies Washington considers dangerous. On Financial Services, he sits on Capital Markets (jurisdiction over PCAOB, listing standards, and delisting policy) and Digital Assets/Financial Technology/AI. He knows whether delisting for Chinese stocks is real or bluster. He knows the scope of tech restrictions. He knows the trajectory of trade negotiations. The market prices all Chinese stocks with a broad "China risk" discount. Gottheimer can distinguish between companies that face actual regulatory danger and companies where that discount is free money.

His track record: 3,300+ trades since 2017. ~22.93% annual returns vs the S&P 500's ~10%. Sold Silicon Valley Bank stock on March 9, 2023, one day before the bank collapsed. Traded up to $104 million in defense contractor stocks in 2024 while on intelligence committees. Violated the STOCK Act with a 9-month late disclosure. Fine: $200.

Same-day batch trades (also disclosed May 19): He also purchased AMD (semiconductors directly affected by his committee's chip export policy), Goldman Sachs (a bank regulated by his Financial Services subcommittees), Freeport-McMoRan (copper/critical minerals tied to defense supply chains he oversees), CBIZ (professional services), Intapp (AI software for financial firms, the exact sector his Unleashing AI Innovation in Financial Services Act targets), and First Watch Restaurant Group (the one trade with no obvious committee overlap).

NetEase reports Q1 2026 earnings today, May 21. Gottheimer bought at $112.63. Whether earnings come in strong or weak, we don't know yet. But a member of the Intelligence Committee and Financial Services Committee who has been cycling in and out of this stock around classified briefings and trade deal announcements probably has a better read on it than you do. Do your own research.

- March 26, 2026: The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation (CITI) held a hearing titled "Information Technology Posture of the Department of Defense." The DOD Chief Information Officer testified on enterprise IT modernization, cybersecurity, zero trust implementation, enterprise cloud, and digital infrastructure spending priorities. Ro Khanna (D-CA) gave the opening statement as the subcommittee's ranking Democrat.

- April 10, 2026: The Department of Justice announced IBM agreed to pay more than $17 million to settle False Claims Act allegations on DEI compliance in its federal contracts. It was the first major settlement under new Trump-era contractor DEI enforcement rules, and it resolved an overhang on IBM's federal contract standing.

- April 13, 2026: A trust associated with Khanna's family purchased IBM shares as part of a batch of roughly 60 stock buys on the same day. Disclosed range: $1,001 to $15,000.

- Today: Position is down roughly 6% from entry. The next catalyst is the FY2027 NDAA markup expected this summer.

For context on what IBM does for the Pentagon: in February 2026 the Missile Defense Agency selected IBM for the SHIELD program under an IDIQ contract with a $151 billion ceiling. That same month, IBM won a $112 million Defense Commissary modernization contract covering 235 military commissaries worldwide. IBM's Granite large language models are integrated into Lockheed Martin's AI Factory, used by more than 10,000 defense engineers, and its dedicated Defense Model is built for deployment in classified, air-gapped environments. IBM is the single largest IT contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Where his work overlaps this trade:

Khanna sits on three bodies that touch IBM's federal business. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services CITI subcommittee, which has direct jurisdiction over DOD cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, information technology, and digital innovation. He sits on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee's subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. And he sits on the Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China. The CITI subcommittee's jurisdiction is not adjacent to IBM's federal product line. It is IBM's federal product line.

The March 26 hearing put the Pentagon's Chief Information Officer in front of Khanna's subcommittee to discuss the exact contract categories where IBM is the incumbent. Eighteen days later, the family trust bought IBM. A retail investor reading IBM's 10-K gets the company's version of its government pipeline. Khanna gets the Pentagon's version, with follow-up questions.

The forward-looking piece is the FY2027 NDAA. Khanna's CITI subcommittee writes the cyber, AI, and IT funding sections of next year's defense authorization bill, and drafting was entering its early phase in April 2026. The FY2026 NDAA already directed DOD to establish a cross-functional AI assessment team by June 2026 and ordered Cyber Command to produce an AI industry collaboration roadmap by August 2026. Those provisions feed IBM's federal segment directly, and Khanna has input into whether they get expanded, funded, or cut in the next cycle.

Through his Oversight seat, Khanna had early visibility into the April 10 IBM DEI settlement before it resolved publicly. That settlement removed a regulatory overhang from IBM's federal contract standing. Three days later, the family trust bought IBM.

Khanna has also been one of the most vocal members of Congress on the ongoing military conflict with Iran. He introduced a bipartisan War Powers resolution and pressed the Defense Secretary on costs. Wartime environments accelerate IT and cybersecurity procurement as DOD expands operations, and IBM is a primary beneficiary of that spending cycle. Khanna sees both the operational tempo and the supplemental defense spending implications before the public does.

This is not an isolated pattern:

Khanna's family trust reported more than 3,000 trades last year totaling nearly $50 million. A 2022 New York Times investigation found that more than 15% of his family's trades overlapped with the companies his congressional duties touched. From January 2024 through April 2026, his family's trading returns outperformed most other members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi.

The IBM purchase was one of roughly 60 stock buys his trust executed that day. That is consistent with a diversified portfolio rebalance. But when one of those 60 stocks happens to be the Pentagon's top IT vendor, and the buyer happens to run the subcommittee that controls that vendor's funding pipeline, the batch context does not make the trade routine. It makes the signal harder to isolate, not absent.

On the public stance:

Khanna has long maintained that his family's trades are managed by his wife's trust without his involvement. He has also positioned himself as one of Congress's loudest voices calling for a ban on Congressional stock trading. The position is small ($1,001 to $15,000) and currently down about 6% from entry. The thesis is multi-year, anchored on the FY2027 NDAA markup expected this summer. This isn't a victory-lap post about a printed alpha trade. It is pointing out that the informational asymmetry is real regardless of where the mark sits today.

The timeline:

- March 31, 2026: NVIDIA announces a $2 billion strategic investment in Marvell Technology ($MRVL) and names it the primary design partner for custom AI accelerators under NVLink Fusion.

- April 1, 2026: The Commerce Department opens applications for the American AI Exports Program, a federal initiative bundling US semiconductors, cloud services, and networking into export packages for allied governments.

- April 2, 2026: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) buys MRVL through his IRA at Moran Wealth Management, the Naples firm where he previously worked as associate VP of investments and a partner. Disclosed range: $1,001 to $15,000.

- April 9, 2026: Donalds' own Oversight subcommittee announces a roundtable titled "Artificial Intelligence and American Power," examining how semiconductor manufacturing constraints are limiting US AI dominance.

- Today: MRVL is trading around $182, up roughly 70% from his entry.

Where his work overlaps this trade:

Donalds sits on two subcommittees that touch Marvell from different sides.

The first is the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence, where he is the eighth-ranking Republican. This subcommittee handles the regulatory and investment framework around AI companies, takes testimony from regulators, and reviews legislation that shapes the environment companies like Marvell operate in. Donalds is not a passive seat on this subcommittee. The STABLE Act and the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act both moved through or were shaped by its work, and he co-introduced the Financial Freedom Act with Sen. Tommy Tuberville in April 2025. He is actively writing the rules of the environment he is also trading inside of.

The second is the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, which has spent the past year running hearings on AI infrastructure, data center energy demand, and semiconductor supply chains. In April 2025 the subcommittee held a hearing titled "America's AI Moonshot: The Economics of AI, Data Centers, and Power Consumption." One year later, on April 9, 2026, it announced the roundtable on semiconductor manufacturing constraints. This is a multi-year program, not a one-off interest.

The policy push around AI semiconductor companies extends beyond Donalds' two seats. H.R. 6996, the Full AI Stack Export Promotion Act, which would codify the American AI Exports Program into law, advanced through the House Foreign Affairs Committee on a 37-7 vote in late April 2026. The federal push into AI infrastructure is not just an executive order that the next administration could reverse. It is being legislated.

Most members of Congress with any AI policy exposure sit on one such committee. Donalds sits on two, covering both the financial side and the infrastructure side. Whether the April 2 trade was driven directly by that exposure, or executed independently by his advisor at Moran Wealth, is not something we can prove from the public record. What we can say is that the timing and the committee proximity point in the same direction.

Taylor bought $AVGO (Broadcom) on Feb 26 at $332.31. Sold April 27 at $418.20. Full close across both his accounts (Sardinia Ready Mix 401(k) and Schwab Joint Brokerage). +25.85% in 60 days.

The same April 27 filing also opened four brand new positions.

1. $V (Visa) bought one day before their Q2 earnings beat.
2. $PG (Procter & Gamble) bought three days after their Q3 results (which included a $400M tariff warning).
3. $PGR (Progressive) bought twelve days after their Q1 beat.
4. $HD (Home Depot) was effectively a same-day account swap, sold from the 401(k) and bought in the brokerage for net zero.

Taylor sits on House Agriculture (Commodity Markets, Digital Assets, and Rural Development subcommittee), House Transportation and Infrastructure, and co-chairs the Congressional Rural Broadband Caucus.

PG, PGR, and HD don't overlap with any of that. PG and PGR were bought after their earnings news was already public. HD was a wash.

Visa is the trickier one and the legislative picture cuts both ways.

On the bearish side, H.R. 7035 (the Credit Card Competition Act) was reintroduced in January 2026 with bipartisan sponsors (Durbin and Marshall in the Senate, Gooden and Lofgren in the House) and a public Trump endorsement. It would force large card issuers to offer network alternatives to Visa and Mastercard, hitting interchange revenue. The bill sits in House Financial Services, where Taylor doesn't. Worth noting the bill has been reintroduced every cycle since 2022 and never moved, so "this dies in committee" is closer to consensus than insider info.

On the bullish side, Taylor's Digital Assets subcommittee has jurisdiction over stablecoin and crypto-payments policy via the CFTC commodity angle. Visa has been investing heavily in stablecoin settlement rails (USDC on Solana, cross-border products, Circle partnership). Pro-stablecoin policy moving through Congress would directly benefit Visa's payment-rail strategy. Taylor has at least a partial channel there.

Whether the V trade is connected to either thread or just a min-tier addition in a broker basket is impossible to tell from the disclosure alone.

The AVGO close is the only trade in this batch with a clear outcome, +25.85% in 60 days.

Filing ID 20034489.

On August 22, 2025 the U.S. government bought 433.3 million shares of Intel at $20.47, totaling $8.9B for a 9.9% stake. That made the federal government Intel's largest single shareholder. The money wasn't new spend either. They converted unpaid CHIPS Act grants ($5.7B) and Secure Enclave program funds ($3.2B) into equity instead of paying them out as cash.

They also got a 5-year warrant for another 5% of Intel at $20, only triggered if Intel ever drops below 51% ownership of its foundry business. So the U.S. government is now financially incentivized to keep Intel's foundry alive.

Now the timeline gets interesting. Two weeks BEFORE the trade, on August 6, 2025, Trump announced a 100% tariff on imported semiconductors with an exemption for any company "building in the United States." Intel is the only U.S. company producing leading-edge logic chips at scale. Every competitor (TSMC, Samsung, SK Hynix) either pays the tariff or accelerates U.S. fabs. It's basically a subsidy paid by every consumer who buys a phone, laptop, GPU, or car.

One month after the trade, on September 18, 2025, Nvidia announced a $5B investment in Intel plus a co-development deal. Jensen called it "an incredible investment." It was finalized December 29. SoftBank put in another $2B. Then Apple foundry rumors started leaking. Ming-Chi Kuo reported Intel's odds of winning Apple M-series production for 2028 had "improved significantly." Apple has been TSMC-exclusive for years, the only thing that flips that is government pressure.

Intel went from $20 to ~$99. The Treasury position is now worth around $43B, up 386%. That's a $34B paper gain in nine months.

Here's where I'm torn. The honest case for it: Treasury holds the shares, not Trump. Taxpayers are technically $34B richer. If you believe domestic chip manufacturing is a national security priority, this turned dead grant money into an appreciating asset and got the U.S. a seat at the table on the only company making leading-edge logic chips on American soil.

The honest case against: consumers paid for the gain through the tariff. The same government is now top shareholder of a company it regulates through the SEC, FTC, DoJ, ITC, and Commerce. The "voluntary" Nvidia investment one month after the government became Intel's biggest shareholder looks a lot like coercion in a suit. The "passive ownership" line is fig leaf, the government agreed to vote with the board and holds a warrant tied to a specific corporate strategy. And the precedent is open-ended. If this works, the next administration of either party takes equity stakes in whatever sector is politically convenient. EVs, pharma, AI, green energy. Once the door opens it doesn't close.

So is a $34B Treasury gain worth higher consumer prices, a structurally conflicted regulator, and a precedent for state equity in private companies? Genuinely curious where this sub lands.

Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) bought $AVGO on March 31, 2026 at $309.51. That was the immediate-next-session bounce off the worst close of Broadcom's entire 2026 calendar year ($293.41 the day before, intraday low $289.96). He bought the absolute bottom tick.

Seven trading days later, on April 6, Broadcom, Alphabet, and Anthropic announced a three-way deal locking AVGO in as the primary design partner for Google's seventh-gen TPU through 2031. Mizuho pegged the Anthropic side alone at $21B in 2026 AI revenue scaling to $42B in 2027. Stock gapped up 6.2% on the print and is now around $417.

Here's the part that turns it from "lucky" into a pattern. On October 10, 2025, he placed two AVGO buys across two separate Morgan Stanley accounts. Three days later, on October 13, OpenAI and Broadcom announced a 10-gigawatt custom-chip deal, the largest custom-silicon agreement in Broadcom's history at the time.

Two AVGO buys, six months apart. Both within three to seven trading days of Broadcom's biggest customer announcement of the cycle. One is a fluke. Two is a pattern.

He sits on House Foreign Affairs, currently marking up a 20-bill chip export control package described in international press as the largest such markup in congressional history. He's also the only House Democrat in the DOGE Caucus, a brand built on calling out insider Washington behavior.

His office attributes individual stock decisions to outside management at Morgan Stanley Active Assets. That's the same setup that produced 83 late filings in August 2024, a STOCK Act violation paid as a civil penalty.

Position is up roughly +35% in 30 days at disclosure.

Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) bought up to $50,000 of Carpenter Technology ($CRS) on January 5, 2026 at $334.19. He sat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee at the time. Twenty-five days later, on January 30, the Senate voted 71-29 to pass the FY2026 Defense Appropriations Bill ($851 billion). The bill was signed into law February 3. He disclosed the purchase February 4, one day after the bill became law.

Carpenter Technology makes specialty alloys (titanium, nickel) used in helicopter rotors, rocket casings, and armored components. Things the defense bill funds. Stock is now $421.46, up 26% in under four months on back-to-back record earnings and raised guidance.

Trump nominated Mullin for Secretary of Homeland Security in March. He was confirmed and sworn in. Husted took over his Senate Appropriations seat on March 25.