The Congress Trade
The trade that stopped working.
Here's a story the data tells on its own — about how being watched changed everything.
For decades, it paid to be in Congress.
Widely-cited academic studies of lawmakers' stock portfolios in the 1990s and 2000s found they beat the market by margins professional investors only dream about — one estimated senators' holdings outperformed by roughly 10 percentage points a year. The people writing the rules were, on paper, remarkably good at the market.
Then the lights came on.
In 2012 the STOCK Act forced members to disclose their trades within 45 days. Then came the trackers and the headlines — every well-timed sale before a hearing, screenshotted and shared with millions. For the first time, the trades were public, fast, and impossible to ignore.
And the edge faded.
We tested it ourselves — copying Congress's disclosed trades across thousands of cases, honestly, out-of-sample, against the market. Once you account for the sectors that were rising anyway, following Congress mostly stopped beating the market. More recent academic work finds the same thing. The famous edge is largely gone.
Sunlight worked.
Not by sending anyone to prison — by making the game too visible to keep playing the old way. That is the entire thesis of this site: you can't fix what you can't see, and you can't hide what everyone is watching. So we make it impossible not to look.
Still worth watching
The trades are still happening — these companies are heavily lobbied and traded by members of Congress. Not a tip. Just a fact you should be able to see.
| Company | Lobbying | Congress trades |
|---|---|---|
| PFEPharma & Health | $74M | 52· 19 members |
| AAPLBig Tech | $41M | 76· 24 members |
| CVXOil & Energy | $34M | 42· 14 members |
| ORCLBig Tech | $26M | 15· 8 members |
| XOMOil & Energy | $26M | 21· 9 members |
| COPOil & Energy | $24M | 17· 6 members |
| LLYPharma & Health | $21M | 31· 8 members |
| INTUBig Tech | $21M | 17· 6 members |
| ABBVPharma & Health | $15M | 32· 14 members |
| BLKBanks & Finance | $15M | 16· 12 members |
| MABanks & Finance | $13M | 18· 9 members |
| TTelecom | $10M | 57· 20 members |
| CRMBig Tech | $7M | 36· 15 members |
| VBanks & Finance | $7M | 52· 22 members |
| GILDPharma & Health | $5M | 6· 3 members |
| CBanks & Finance | $5M | 22· 9 members |
| JPMBanks & Finance | $3M | 53· 19 members |
| NEEOil & Energy | $3M | 42· 18 members |
| JNJPharma & Health | $1M | 62· 19 members |
| PLDReal Estate | $1M | 17· 6 members |
Outperformance studies: Ziobrowski et al. (Senate 1993–98; House 1985–2001). The fade post-2012 is supported by later academic research and by our own out-of-sample analysis of disclosed trades. Lobbying: U.S. Senate (LDA). Trades: House STOCK Act periodic transaction reports. We describe a statistical trend across Congress as a whole — not an accusation against any individual.