How we collect and publish congressional trading data
This page explains exactly what our trade data is, where it comes from, what it cannot tell you, and what we choose not to publish. If you are citing us, quoting us, or checking our work, this is the page to read.
Where the data comes from
Members of Congress must report securities transactions under the STOCK Act of 2012, within 45 days of the trade. Senators file with the Senate Electronic Financial Disclosure system; representatives file with the Clerk of the House. Both are public records.
We do not scrape those systems ourselves. Current filings come from the openly licensed congress-trading-monitor dataset (MIT licence), which normalises House Clerk and Senate eFD filings. Historical filings come from the Senate Stock Watcher archive. Member details — names, states, parties, offices, contact information — come from the public-domain congress-legislators project, and official portraits are public-domain images from the U.S. Government Publishing Office.
Every row on this site links to the original filing. If our table and the filing disagree, the filing is right — please tell us.
What this data is not
These are transactions, not holdings. A filing records that a member bought or sold something on a date. It does not tell you what they own now. Positions can be sold below the reporting threshold, held in accounts that report differently, or managed in a blind trust — none of which appear here. We never describe any member’s “portfolio”, because we do not know it and neither does anyone else working from these filings.
We also do not calculate investment returns or performance for any member, and nothing on this site is investment advice or a recommendation. This is a public record, published for transparency.
Amounts are ranges, not figures
The law requires members to disclose a bracket rather than an exact number — for example “$15,001 – $50,000”. Where we show a total value we add up the lower bounds and the upper bounds separately and present both, so a figure like “$120K–$450K” means the true total sits somewhere in that span. We never publish a single midpoint dressed up as a precise number.
Trade date, disclosure date, and “late”
Every trade has two dates: when it happened and when it was reported. The STOCK Act allows 45 days between them, so our feed is sorted by disclosure date — that is when the information became public, and sorting by trade date would bury newly revealed trades beneath older ones. Where a filing exceeded the 45-day window we mark it Late. Currently 751 of 8,806 transactions (8.5%) carry that flag.
Coverage — including where it is incomplete
We currently hold 8,806 transactions: 8,037 Senate and 769 House, from 132 members, covering June 14, 2012 to July 20, 2026.
There is a gap in our coverage. We hold no filings between December 2, 2020 and January 7, 2025 — roughly 4 years. Our historical archive stops where its maintainers stopped updating it, and our current source begins later. We would rather say so than let the date range at the top of a page imply continuous coverage.
How we attribute filings to members
Filings give a filer’s name; matching that to a specific member is not always trivial. We match on surname and given name together, allowing for formal and familiar forms (William/Bill), compound surnames (Van Hollen), and a small set of legal-name aliases. Where the match is ambiguous we do not guess — the name is shown without a link rather than risk attributing a trade to the wrong person.
Only sitting senators have profile pages, so only they are linked — 3,924 of 8,806 transactions. Former senators, representatives, and other filers appear by name with whatever office and party the source provides.
Which company pages we publish
A page titled “who in Congress trades this” should be able to answer the question. We publish one when a company has been traded by three or more members, or has twenty or more disclosed transactions — currently 276 companies. Below that threshold the data still appears in our tables and member pages, but we do not create a standalone page for it, because a heading over a two-row table is not worth anyone’s time.
How often this updates
Our data is a dated snapshot rather than a live feed — currently July 24, 2026, which is shown on the tracker so you can judge its age yourself. We refresh weekly. Disclosures lag trades by up to 45 days regardless of how often anyone refreshes, so a slightly older snapshot changes far less than it might seem.
Data is presented for transparency and education. It is not investment advice, not a recommendation, and not a statement of what any member currently owns. This site is not affiliated with the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, or any government agency.
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