Congress Trade Check

Members report each trade as a dollar range (for example $15,001–$50,000, column B on the form), not an exact amount. The STOCK Act only asks for these value bands, the same ones used on the yearly financial disclosure, so most filings never give the exact dollars. Most trackers count each trade at the middle of its range. Actual amounts are rarely centred in their ranges, so this site uses a calibrated best estimate instead (see below).

Exact amounts. A few members also write the number of shares in the trade's description (“Purchased 10,000 shares”, “sold 75 shares at $72.22”). For those trades the amount is calculated exactly: the total the filing states, or the shares times the price it states, or else the shares times the stock's closing price on the trade date (the price as it traded that day, before any later stock split). The result is used only if it falls inside the reported range; if it doesn't, the trade keeps its range. These trades show the dollar figure marked “exact, from shares reported”, and totals and the scorecard count them at that figure instead of the range's estimate. Exercised options count at the strike price paid. Hover over an exact amount to see the calculation. Scanned paper forms have no description field, so their trades always use ranges.

Returns are measured two ways. “Trade date” measures the member's own timing. “Disclosure date” measures what an investor could have achieved by acting on the filing: buy at the closing price on the day the report was filed, and sell on the day their sale was filed. Members can wait up to 45 days to report, so the disclosure-date figure is the realistic measure for anyone following their trades.

A buy is held until the same member reports a full sale of that stock; partial sales don't close it. If no full sale is reported, it is valued at the latest closing price. Its result is compared with SPY, an S&P 500 fund, bought and sold on the same days. The buy price shown is the stock's closing price on the trade date, since filings don't give the exact price.

For a sale, "since trade" shows how the stock moved after they sold. A decline after a sale indicates a well-timed sale.

Options (calls and puts) are valued by how the underlying stock moved: a call gains when the stock rises, a put when it falls. Real options are leveraged, so their actual gains and losses were larger than shown. Turn off “Include options” to exclude them.

Company size is today's market value, not the value on the trade date. Funds, ETFs and foreign shares are priced from their market prices and count like stocks; funds and ETFs are excluded with large caps unless that option is turned off. Bonds, private holdings, and companies bought out or delisted since the trade have no public price here, so they are excluded from return calculations.

Public signals (in Data Visualization) ranks stocks that members of Congress and officials bought in the last 120 days. Each stock gets a score out of 100 that combines their buying with other public information about the company. Business leaders are left out, since they aren't public officials.

Net buyers (up to 40 points). Buying and selling are weighed together, so a stock that is mostly being sold doesn't score well just because a few people bought some. Each person gets one vote: what they bought minus what they sold, using the middle of each reported range (a trade with no stated amount counts at that person's usual size). Three steps keep the vote fair:

• Log scale. Every 10 times more money adds the same amount to a vote, so one very large trader can't outweigh everyone else. An $8,000 net buy is worth about 1, $375,000 about 2.6 and $5 million about 3.7.
• Their usual trade size. Each person's usual size is the middle of all the trades they have reported since 2023. A trade far larger than usual counts up to twice as much; one far smaller counts as little as half.
• Adding up. Buyers' votes count as positive and sellers' as negative. A positive total earns up to 30 points; a negative total takes up to 30 points off. Three or more different people buying within a month adds 10 points, because several people buying close together is a stronger sign than one large trade.

Only people who put in more than they took out count as net buyers. Under that number, the image shows net buying by number of trades (left) and by dollars (right), each labelled at the top of the column: (buys − sells) ÷ (buys + sells), from −100% (all selling) to +100% (all buying), in green when buying outweighs selling and red when selling does. This measure, the net purchase ratio, is widely used in research on company insiders' trading. The two can disagree: many small sales against a few large buys gives a negative trades figure and a positive dollars figure.

Committee (up to 20). 10 points for each net buyer whose committee covers the company's industry (see “Which industries each committee oversees”).

Contracts (up to 15). Federal contract money awarded to the company in the last 90 days, from USAspending.gov.

Lobbying (up to 15). What the company reported spending on lobbying in the latest House lobbying disclosures, with its most frequent lobbying topic.

Hearings (up to 10). House committee hearings and markups in the next 28 days that name the company (10 points) or cover its industry (2 points), from the House committee calendar.

Leaders (up to 10). Posts in the last 30 days by well-known political figures that name the company or its ticker: 4 points for each person, plus 1 for each further post. The big number is how many people; the small one is how many posts. A mention counts whether it praises or criticises the company, since either can move a stock. Company names that are also everyday words, such as Apple or Target, count only when the ticker is used.

Only personal accounts are read, not government-office or campaign accounts, and a post doesn't count when the person runs, owns or works for the company (for example, the Trump family or Devin Nunes posting about Trump Media). The people followed are Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Devin Nunes, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and Tulsi Gabbard on Truth Social, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Buttigieg, Barack Obama, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Jasmine Crockett and Mark Cuban on Bluesky (verified accounts). Posts on X (Twitter), such as Elon Musk's, aren't included because X charges for access.

Insiders (up to 10). The company's own executives, directors and large shareholders buying its stock on the open market in the last 90 days (SEC Form 4 filings). Only people whose purchases add up to at least $25,000 count, which leaves out small automatic employee share-plan purchases.

Points from every column are added and the total is capped at 100. The score shows where several public signals point the same way. It is not a prediction or investment advice.

The STOCK Act makes members report trades in their own accounts, their spouse's, their dependent children's, and accounts they hold jointly. Each trade shows which of these it came from, and the “Account” filter separates them.

Trades by anyone else (other relatives, staff, donors or business partners) are not linked to a member here. Doing so fairly would require verified evidence of coordination, which public filings do not contain.

A trade counts as being in a member's committee area when the company's industry, or the company itself, is on that committee's list. These lists are an editorial judgement based on each committee's official jurisdiction. Committees that touch every industry, such as Appropriations or Budget, never match. Committee seats are today's assignments, so an older trade is checked against the committees the member sits on now, which may differ from their seats at the time. Members who have left Congress have no seats listed, so their trades never count as committee matches.