Congressional Trades on a Single Stock: Reading the Per-Ticker Congress Card

Why Per-Ticker Matters More Than Aggregate

There's a well-publicized "Congress outperforms the market" story, but the tradeable version isn't the aggregate return of Congressional portfolios — it's the per-name, per-member view. A single committee chair's $500k purchase in a defense contractor the week before a markup meeting is a much stronger signal than the average of 535 members' dispersed trades. The value of the STOCK Act disclosures is that they're public, time-stamped, and attributable; the per-ticker card is where that raw data becomes a decision.

What the Congress Summary Shows

The Congress Summary card aggregates the trailing 12 months of disclosed trades in a specific ticker. It breaks down net buy/sell dollars by chamber (Senate vs House), by party, and by committee assignments relevant to the issuer. A separate strip lists the 5 most recent reportable trades — member name, party/state, chamber, transaction date, disclosure date, amount range, and a direct link to the underlying eFD/House clerk filing.

Reading the Signal

The academically verified pattern is narrow: trades by members on the relevant committee (e.g., Armed Services for defense names, Finance for banks) beat their benchmarks consistently; trades by members *not* on the relevant committee do not. Filter aggressively on committee match. A second useful filter is disclosure-to-trade gap: members who disclose within 30 days behave differently from members who disclose at the statutory 45-day deadline. Late filers are worth extra skepticism.

Where It Fits

Pair with the full Congress activity dashboard for cross-name pattern recognition — a committee chair who just bought your stock and 3 peer tickers on the same day is running a sector thesis, not a single-name bet. On-ticker, confirm with Insider MSPR and Institutional Holders — three different disclosure regimes (corporate insiders, institutional 13F, STOCK Act) converging on the same side is a much cleaner setup than any one on its own.

Open the Congress Summary card → /app/stocks/AAPL/sentiment