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What is congressional insider trading — and is it actually legal?

A complete 2026 guide. Every member of Congress is on this page — pick yours below or click any state on the map. Free, no signup.

Updated daily·189,595 trades tracked since 2012·538 members
UNITED STATES CAPITOL · WHERE THE TRADES BEGIN
The short answer: Members of Congress are allowed to trade stocks. The 2012 STOCK Act requires them to disclose trades within 45 days. Enforcement is weak — the typical fine for a late filing is $200 — and at least 12.5% of disclosures are filed late. See the worst offenders ↓

The 5 questions everyone asks

Is it illegal for members of Congress to trade stocks?
No — trading individual stocks is not illegal for members of Congress. The 2012 STOCK Act ("Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge") explicitly extended insider-trading laws to apply to Congress for the first time, but it didn't ban trading itself. It required disclosure of any trade over $1,000 within 45 days of the transaction.

What is illegal under the STOCK Act: trading on material non-public information obtained through congressional duties — for example, classified intelligence briefings, private meetings with regulators, or knowledge of legislation that hasn't been made public.

The catch: proving "material non-public information" is hard, prosecutions are rare, and the typical fine for a late filing is $200. Many critics argue the STOCK Act was deliberately toothless.
How can I see my representative's stock trades?
All disclosures are public — but spread across multiple government databases. The official sources are the House Clerk's Financial Disclosures portal and the Senate eFD system.

The fastest way: pick your state in our Find Your Rep widget below. We pull every disclosed trade for every member into one place, organized by politician, ticker, and timing.
Who are the most active stock traders in Congress?
By volume of trades, the top three are: By dollar amount per trade, frequently cited names include Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), and Dan Crenshaw (R-TX).

See the late-filing leaderboard ↓
Why are politicians allowed to trade stocks at all?
The standard arguments:
  1. They're supposed to be representative of the country — many came from finance/business and bring private-sector experience.
  2. Blind trusts are an alternative — but only ~30 members use them.
  3. A full ban would shrink the talent pool — high-net-worth professionals would refuse to serve.
The counter-argument: legislators write the rules that move every market. Even unconscious bias toward your portfolio is a conflict. Multiple bills have been introduced to ban congressional stock trading entirely (the PELOSI Act, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act) — none have passed.
How accurate is congressional trade tracking?
Tracking is only as accurate as the disclosures themselves. The STOCK Act requires Periodic Transaction Reports (PTRs) within 45 days. In our data:
  • 23,426 of 189,595 trades (12.5%) were filed late (>45 days)
  • Average disclosure gap: 44.9 days
  • Worst single gap: 997 days
Some trades are never disclosed at all — we can only track what gets filed. We flag late filings in red on every politician's profile so you can spot patterns.

Pick your state — see who represents you

Choose a state below and we'll show you every Senator and Representative from that state, with their last 5 disclosed trades. Free, no signup.

Find Your Rep widget · Free · Open full version →

The whole picture: every seat, every party, every state

Below is the entire 119th Congress as a clickable map. Each dot is a member. Color them by party (red/blue), by trading activity, or by signal tier. Click any dot to see that member's full portfolio.

Interactive Congress Map · Free · Open full version →

The worst late-filing offenders

The STOCK Act requires disclosure within 45 days. Some members consistently miss that deadline. Below: top 10 by late-filing percentage (out of members with ≥50 disclosed trades).

Member
Party
Trades
Late %
1Thomas SuozziD-NY1,26086.4%
2Tommy TubervilleR-AL2,09022.0%
3Michael McCaulR-TX32,30220.7%
4Ro KhannaD-CA48,257~12%
5Josh GottheimerD-NJ6,718~10%

A "late" trade means the Periodic Transaction Report was filed more than 45 days after the trade — the legal threshold under the STOCK Act. The standard fine is $200 per late report. Enforcement is at the discretion of the House/Senate Ethics Committees.

How we know all this

Every trade on this page comes from public federal disclosures. We don't scrape — we connect directly to the original sources:

Direct pipes to the source

The hidden 45-day window

Here's the wrinkle most people miss. The STOCK Act gives members up to 45 days to disclose a trade. By the time you read about Pelosi buying Nvidia in the news, the price has already moved.

That gap — between when a trade actually happens and when the public learns about it — is what we call the Dark Window. It's also where the alpha is. By the time disclosures hit, the move is over.

The only way to catch the trade in time is to predict who's likely to buy what before they file. That's what GovGreed's signal engine does — using committee schedules, sector momentum, contribution patterns, and 7 other layers to forecast the next likely trade.

You've seen what happened. Want to see what happens next?

The map and table above show past trades. To see our predictions of what each politician is likely to buy next — backed by a 7-layer signal engine with a 72.7% A+ tier hit rate on 30-day backtests — get a free GovGreed account.

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Last updated: · Not financial advice · All data from public federal disclosures
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