SNEK POLICY
If You Can Move the Market, You Should Not Be Trading It
People with major government power should not be actively trading individual stocks while their decisions can move markets or affect specific companies.
Who is covered
The restriction should apply to elected officials and senior unelected officials with major policymaking, regulatory, contracting, or enforcement authority. Spouses should be included.
Adult children should not automatically be prohibited from investing, but significant transactions connected to an official’s area of authority should face enhanced disclosure and conflict review.
What remains allowed
Broad index funds, mutual funds, ETFs, retirement accounts, and genuinely independently managed funds can remain available unless evidence shows they are being used to evade the rule.
Existing individual holdings should be addressed through divestment, a qualified blind trust, independent management, or strict restrictions on trading.
Consequences
Serious violations can justify forfeiture of improper gains, substantial financial penalties, removal from office, and criminal referral where the evidence supports a crime. Due process still applies.
FULL POLICY DETAILS
The longer version
Why SNEK thinks this
The conflict is straightforward. Officials who can move markets, write tax rules, approve contracts, regulate industries, or receive nonpublic government information should not also be making concentrated personal bets on the industries affected by those decisions. SNEK would rather remove the conflict than spend years arguing about whether any particular trade was suspicious enough.
How it would work
Elected officials and major unelected officials with meaningful policy power should be restricted from trading individual securities. Spouses should be covered by the same prohibition. Broad diversified funds can remain available because they do not create the same company-specific conflict. Existing concentrated holdings could be sold, placed in a qualified blind arrangement, frozen, or handled through genuinely independent management under clear rules.
Where SNEK leaves room
Adult children are different from spouses because they are separate adults. SNEK’s approach is stronger disclosure and conflict review rather than automatically treating an independent adult child’s entire portfolio as the official’s property. The exact enforcement mechanism can vary, but meaningful violations should carry penalties large enough that the rule is not just paperwork.
Related SNEK policies
Public Power Requires Public Financial Transparency • End the Paid Lobbying Industry