Congress Trades: The Alpha Nobody Talks About
Tracking Congressional trading disclosures has historically beaten the S&P. Here is how to use it.
The STOCK Act
The STOCK Act of 2012 requires members of Congress and senior staff to disclose individual stock trades within 45 days. Those disclosures are public. Several academic studies have shown that a portfolio mimicking Congressional trades has outperformed the S&P 500 over multi-year windows.
Why it works
Members of Congress sit on committees that get regular briefings from sector experts — defense, healthcare, tech, energy. They are, to put it charitably, information-advantaged. The 45-day lag means retail traders are never first, but they can still ride the trend.
How to filter the noise
Not every disclosure is signal. Filter by trade size (>$50k), concentration (single ticker vs. basket rebalance), and committee alignment (a defense committee member buying LMT is different from a random rep buying SPY).
Our Congress Tracker does exactly this — it scores every disclosure on those axes and surfaces the ones that historically precede meaningful moves.
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