Congress Trading Report: Q1 2026 Biggest Buys

The STOCK Act requires US members of Congress to disclose trades within 45 days of execution. This guide explains how to read that flow — where the edge historically comes from, and how to tell a meaningful pattern from noise. The sector table below is an illustrative example of how you'd summarise a quarter's disclosures, not live filing data; for current filings, use the primary disclosure sources.

Why Track Congressional Trading?

A 2004 study in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis found that US senators outperformed the market by 12.3% annually. A 2011 paper by Ziobrowski et al. found house members outperformed by 6% annually. Despite the STOCK Act's disclosure requirements, the informational edge from committee memberships and regulatory intelligence likely persists, albeit reduced.

The Caveats

Congressional trading is not a direct buy signal. Members may be selling to diversify, meet liquidity needs, or satisfy disclosure obligations. The strongest signal comes when multiple members from the same committee buy within a short window — clustering similar to insider cluster signals in corporate markets. Use congressional flows as a corroborating data point, not a primary screen.