Donald Trump Has Stake In Hydroxychloroquine Drugmaker

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The article was speculating about the possibility that Trump could have bought more stake in the pharmaceutical company....but that’s pure speculation out of thin air, as stated above.

Speculation is as good as fact to some.

Which is why the POTUS is supposed to divest his or her business interests to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The trusts do not have direct ownership of shares to any of the companies; they do not have stock certificates to any of the companies. That's not how investing in a mutual fund works. Millions of people invest money through mutual funds. Those mutual funds in turn invest the money in a very large number and broad array of companies. Mutual funds typically give people the option to invest percentages of their contributions in different levels of risk. Example:

A person may choose to designate their invested money as follows (or any percentages totaling 100% that they choose):

50% in the lowest risk/most conservative group of investments (lowest rate of return or risk).
25% in the moderate risk group of investments (possibility of a moderate rate of return or risk)
25% in the high risk group of investments (possibility of a high rate of return or risk)

A person can play around with those percentages and adjust them frequently. However, firstly, a person won't know which companies the fund is actually investing in for each of those groups; secondly, even if they did know or attained that information somehow they surely couldn't say: "I have some money invested in risk group [ ]. I see that the mutual fund has some stock with Acme Corporation. I don't like Acme Corporation. Please don't invest my money with that company." Does NOT work that way. Not to mention the fact that the mutual fund may have $$$ with Company X today and sell the shares of Company X tomorrow. It's not a static thing and it's beyond the control of individual mutual fund investors to dictate that.

Bottom line: People don't know which individual companies a mutual fund are investing in with their money. They just don't as a matter of practice. I stand by that.

I know how mutual funds work.

The article states that a few of the funds the trump empire is invested in hold high % stakes in that particular pharma company, so it is known.

Originally when the story was hyped by Huffpo the spin was an allusion that Trump was touting a drug because
he was personally aware of and had high stakes in the drug company that makes the drug rather than touting the drug because it looks promising to actually be able to help people and save lives. There were even mumblings among the Democratic political elite that he should be impeached for this apparent attempt at lining his pockets if the sales of that particular drug took off. Fake. False. Inaccurate. Delusion.

There has to be some truth that the drug may help. There’s a newspaper open in front of me and the article on the bottom right is about a HCQ C-19 study about to kick off at McGill University Health Centre. (medical school in Quebec)

But I still don’t blame anyone for thinking anything trump is promoting is because he’s trying to line his own pockets. The guy has been Very Consistent in that aim.

I only wish the same weren't true of virtually every politician in Washington; and that's a fact.

A perfect response to my statement above would be: "Touché."

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump ... loroquine/

Huh? Clear as mud.

Hmm... Much Ado About Nothing.

Last edited by Fnord on 09 Apr 2020, 11:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

What it saying is that there is no possible way Trump could profit from it.