Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) sold between $450,007 and $1 million in bonds from major U.S. banks last month, shortly before the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history stirred up turmoil in the nation’s banking sector, according to a new filing.
Trone sold the fixed income securities from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo on February 16.
That was roughly three weeks before confidence in the banking industry crashed as Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed and concerns mounted about how large banks’ involvement in the run largely targeting regional banks could spread the contagion.
Trone—who sits on Congress’ joint economic committee and the House appropriations committee—has no added “insight into the financial markets” from his committee membership and the transactions were “unaffected by the stock market’s behavior” and the bank collapses, Trone’s spokeswoman Sasha Galbreath said in an emailed statement to Forbes.
A “vast majority” of Trone’s holdings are “variable-rate notes, bonds, and other vehicles with fixed maturity dates, or ETFs and mutual fund-like securities,” Galbreath noted, adding that fund managers execute all transactions in his name.
It’s unknown what Trone’s return on investment was on the February bond sales or how much the securities would be worth now, but high inflation and interest rates have weighed heavily on the bond market.
You can read more of this Forbes article here.