This is the long version. If you want to understand everything about congressional stock trading — from the legal framework to the data to the practical strategies — this is the place.

The basics

Members of the U.S. Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks. They’re supposed to do it without using material nonpublic information, and they’re required to disclose their trades to the public. Those two rules form the foundation of everything else.

The law governing this is the STOCK Act, signed in 2012. It requires disclosure within 45 days and explicitly bans insider trading by members of Congress.

On the institutional side, hedge funds and large investment managers are required to file 13F reports with the SEC every quarter. Same basic idea: the public gets to see what they’re holding, with a delay.

Between these two disclosure systems, you can track hundreds of politicians and thousands of institutional investors. The data is all public. It just hasn’t historically been easy to access.

The people

Politicians

There are 535 members of Congress (435 in the House, 100 in the Senate). Not all of them trade actively. Many stick to broad index funds or don’t trade at all. But a significant portion actively buys and sells individual stocks.

We currently track 46 politicians with a combined 3,619+ disclosed trades. The most-watched include Nancy Pelosi (1-year CAGR: +23.02%, 117 trades), John Fetterman (+73.07%, 1 trade), and less obvious names like Ashley Moody (+76.51%), David J. Taylor (+38.45%), and Cleo Fields (+20.49%, 143 trades). Our top 15 ranking shows the full leaderboard.

Hedge fund managers

The 13F universe is massive. Thousands of funds file quarterly. We track 11 major institutional investors with 179+ positions combined. The top performers by 1-year CAGR:

Manager1Y CAGRSharpeStyle
Mohnish Pabrai+116.33%1.19Ultra-concentrated value
Michael Burry+28.50%0.79Contrarian, high turnover
Carl Icahn+17.04%0.44Activist
Pat Dorsey+15.90%1.53Quality compounders
Bryan Lawrence+14.02%1.41Concentrated value
Buffett+7.14%0.94Long-term value
Ackman+3.09%0.63Activist/concentrated

The data

What gets disclosed

For politicians: the asset name, transaction type (buy, sell, exchange), date, and an approximate dollar range. Not exact share counts. Filed within 45 days.

For 13F filers: all long equity positions at quarter-end, with exact share counts and market values. Filed within 45 days of quarter-end.

What doesn’t get disclosed

For politicians: short sales, options strategies (in some cases), positions held by family members in separate accounts (depending on filing rules), and anything below the reporting threshold.

For 13F filers: short positions, cash, bonds, international stocks, derivatives (mostly), and private investments. The 13F is equity-only and long-only.

This is important context. When we say “Buffett’s portfolio,” we mean Berkshire’s disclosed U.S. equity holdings. That’s a subset of the total picture.

The delay

Both systems have a 45-day disclosure window. This is the single most important factor for anyone trying to follow these trades.

A politician buys on Day 0. You find out somewhere between Day 1 and Day 45. The stock might have already moved 15% in that window. Our backtests always use the disclosure date as the entry point, not the trade date. This gives a realistic picture of what a copy-trader would actually experience.

Some coverage of congressional trading ignores this delay and shows theoretical returns based on the trade date. Those numbers look great but they’re not achievable. We think that’s misleading, so we don’t do it.

The performance

Politicians vs the market

Over the past year, the top 15 politicians have posted simulated copy-returns between +8.83% and +76.51%. The top 8 beat the S&P 500, even after accounting for the disclosure delay.

That doesn’t mean copying politician trades is a guaranteed strategy. The variance is high. Concentrated individual stock portfolios can swing 30-40% in either direction. Some politicians lost money — Shri Thanedar at -67.69%, David McCormick at -27.63%, Brandon Gill at -38.74%. The average includes both winners and losers.

Hedge funds vs the market

Similar story with 13F data. The best managers outperform (Pabrai at +116%, Burry at +28.5%), but some underperform (Chuck Akre at -8.98%, Li Lu at -14.16%). The value is in identifying which managers have a consistent edge, not in following everyone.

Strategies

We cover how to copy politician trades in a separate guide, but here’s the summary of the three main approaches:

  1. Follow a single top performer. Highest potential returns, highest concentration risk.
  2. Follow the consensus. Look for stocks bought by multiple politicians or multiple hedge funds. Lower variance.
  3. Use as a screener. Let the disclosures point you to names worth researching on your own.

The tools

Tracking all of this manually is theoretically possible but practically painful. The House Clerk’s website is a maze of PDFs. SEC EDGAR is a wall of XML. Combining both data sources, normalizing the formats, and calculating portfolio-level metrics requires significant automation.

We wrote a comparison of the best tracking apps available today.

The ethics

Should politicians be allowed to trade individual stocks at all? The STOCK Act says yes, as long as they disclose and don’t use insider information. Critics argue that the information asymmetry is inherent to the job. Simply being briefed on policy directions gives you an edge, even without specific “tips.”

Bills to ban congressional stock trading entirely come up regularly. So far, none have passed. What we can do is make the existing disclosures accessible to everyone, so at least the playing field is as level as it can be within the current rules.

Where to go from here

This guide covers the big picture. For specific deep dives: