Learn
Plain-English guides to how congressional stock trading is disclosed, regulated, and read.
Members of Congress vote on legislation that moves entire industries: defense budgets, drug pricing, antitrust enforcement, semiconductor subsidies. They also buy and sell stock in the companies affected by those votes. Since 2012 they have been legally required to tell the public when they do, and those disclosures are what this site collects and organizes.
The disclosures themselves are not easy to use. They arrive as individual PDFs on two separate government websites, one for the House and one for the Senate. Dollar amounts are reported as broad ranges rather than exact figures, so a trade listed as “$1,001–$15,000” could be either. Filings appear up to 45 days after a trade actually happened, and lawmakers sometimes amend or refile them later. Reading a single filing is manageable; comparing hundreds across dozens of lawmakers is not.
These guides explain the rules and the paperwork so the numbers on the rest of the site are interpretable: what the law requires, what the forms actually say, and, just as importantly, what the data cannot tell you.
Guides
What Is the STOCK Act?
The 2012 law that requires members of Congress to disclose their stock trades: what it covers, who it applies to, and why it exists.
How to Read a Periodic Transaction Report
A field-by-field walkthrough of the disclosure form: transaction dates, asset names, buy/sell types, and the dollar ranges lawmakers report.
Congressional Disclosure Deadlines & Penalties
The 45-day rule, the $200 late-filing fee, annual financial disclosures, and what happens when a lawmaker files late.
Common questions about congressional stock trading
Is it legal for members of Congress to trade stocks?
Yes. Members of Congress may buy and sell individual stocks, and most restrictions are about disclosure rather than prohibition. The STOCK Act made explicit that lawmakers are not exempt from insider trading law and required them to report transactions publicly. Proposals to ban individual stock ownership outright have been introduced repeatedly but none has become law.
Does a disclosed trade mean a lawmaker did something wrong?
No, and this is the most common misreading of the data. A filing records that a transaction occurred; it says nothing about why. Many trades are executed by financial advisors, spouses, or blind-trust managers without the member's involvement. A disclosure is a fact about a transaction, not a finding of misconduct.
Why are the amounts shown as ranges?
The disclosure form asks filers to select a bracket rather than enter an exact figure. The narrowest bracket is $1,001–$15,000 and the widest exceed $50 million. Any total on this site is therefore an estimate built from bracket midpoints, which is why we describe sums as approximate.
How current is the data?
Filings are collected from the official House and Senate disclosure systems on a continuous basis. The binding constraint is the law itself: a trade need not be reported for up to 45 days, so the most recent transactions on any tracker are necessarily weeks behind the market.
For collection methodology and source links, see about the data. To browse the filings themselves, start with the full trade feed or an individual lawmaker profile.