Congress Stock Trades: STOCK Act Disclosure Rules

What the STOCK Act requires members of Congress to disclose, how long they can wait, why amounts appear as ranges, and what that means for anyone reading the data.

Members of the US House and Senate are allowed to own and trade individual stocks, and the public can see what they trade. The rules that make this visible come from the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, known as the STOCK Act, signed into law in April 2012. This article explains what it actually requires, because the details determine how useful the data is.

What must be reported

Members of Congress and certain senior staff must file a Periodic Transaction Report (PTR) for securities transactions above $1,000. The obligation also covers transactions by a member's spouse and dependent children, not just the member personally.

A PTR must be filed within 30 days of becoming aware of the transaction, and no later than 45 days after the transaction itself. In practice this means a trade can become public up to six weeks after it happened.

Why amounts are ranges, not exact figures

Disclosures do not list an exact dollar value. They report a range, such as:

• $1,001 – $15,000
• $15,001 – $50,000
• $50,001 – $100,000
• $100,001 – $250,000
• $250,001 – $500,000
• $500,001 – $1,000,000
• $1,000,001 – $5,000,000 and above

So a trade labelled "$1,001 – $15,000" could be a $1,100 purchase or a $14,000 one. When you compare members, treat the amount as a rough size band.

Where the filings are published

• House: the Clerk of the House publishes disclosures in its online financial disclosure database.
• Senate: the Secretary of the Senate runs a separate electronic filing and search system.

They are two different sites with different formats, which is one reason aggregating them takes work.

What the data does and does not tell you

It tells you what was traded and roughly how much. Ticker, buy or sell, the owner (member, spouse, dependent child, joint) and the amount band.

It does not tell you when the member decided to trade relative to the committee work, briefings or legislation that might be relevant. By the time you read a filing, the market has had up to 45 days to move. The data also cannot show a motive. Many trades are made by spouses or by managed accounts the member does not control.

A fair way to use it is as a map of attention: which stocks keep appearing, whether several members are active in the same sector, and how that changes over time. It is a weak basis for copying individual trades. For a look at what research says about performance, read do members of Congress beat the market?

The penalties are small

The STOCK Act's enforcement is modest. A late filing carries a fee that is small relative to the sums involved, and public scrutiny is the main practical deterrent. That is a reason the filings themselves are valuable: transparency is the mechanism.

How Bourse presents it

Bourse reads new House and Senate disclosures as they appear, normalises the names and tickers, and shows each trade with its amount band and filing date, next to insider Form 4 filings and hedge fund 13F holdings. Free users see filings once they are more than 24 hours old; Premium shows them immediately.

Bourse provides financial data and editorial information, parts of which are generated by AI. This page is for general education only. It is not personalised investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument. Make your own decisions.