Congress Diff: What Legislators Bought and Sold This Quarter

Why the Aggregate Is More Informative Than Any Single Trade

One senator's $50k buy isn't a trading thesis. Thirty members of Congress netting positive across Big Tech over a quarter, while netting negative across regional banks, is — because it means something in the policy environment has shifted and enough people positioned for it that the shift is probably real. The Congress Diff view aggregates thousands of individual filings into a quarter-over-quarter net flow per ticker and per sector, which is the unit of analysis that actually generates signal.

What the Congress Diff Card Shows

The Congress Diff card shows quarterly net legislator flow per ticker with: net buy / sell count (legislators net-long vs net-short this quarter), estimated net notional (midpoint of disclosed ranges), change vs prior quarter, sector aggregates, and committee overlap ratio (how concentrated the net flow is within committee-relevant names). A sector-heatmap view plots quarterly net flow by sector so you can see where legislator conviction clusters and shifts over time. Exports cover CSV + a weekly email digest.

Reading the Flow

Three takes are the most actionable. First, sector rotation leads policy narrative — often by 1-2 quarters; legislators positioning net-long in, say, defense or rare-earths two quarters before the narrative turns bullish is a pattern that recurs. Second, committee-concentrated flow is higher-signal than generic flow — if the net-long flow in a healthcare name is 80% sourced from Health Committee members, the implied information ratio is higher than a broad name with equal flow spread across 30 unrelated legislators. Third, combine with lobbying spend — when net-long congressional flow AND quarterly lobbying spend both jump for the same name, a legislative / regulatory tailwind is the base case.

Where It Fits

Pair with Congress Activity for the roster-level book, Congress Live Activity for the raw feed, and the per-ticker Congress Summary + Lobbying cards for the single-name drill-down.

Open the Congress Diff card → /app/congress