How to track congressional stock trades
Where the filings live, how to read them, and the fastest way to follow the patterns.
Every trade a member of Congress makes is public — the challenge is that the raw filings are scattered and hard to read. Here is how to actually follow them.
Where the official filings are
- House: disclosures are published by the Clerk of the House.
- Senate: disclosures are published through the Senate Electronic Financial Disclosure (eFD) system.
These are the primary sources. They are free, but they are filed as individual documents (often scanned PDFs), which makes spotting patterns across hundreds of members tedious.
How to read a filing
Each Periodic Transaction Report shows the asset, whether it was a purchase or sale, the date, and an amount range. Remember the 45-day lag: you are seeing disclosed trades, not live ones.
The faster way
Rather than read filings one by one, Congress Watch aggregates them so you can:
- See every stock a member has traded on one page.
- See which members traded a given stock.
- Spot a herd signal when several members move into the same name at once.
That turns a pile of PDFs into a readable picture. See our Methodology for exactly how.
Not financial advice — this is research on public disclosures.
Where can I find congressional stock trade filings?
House trades are published by the Clerk of the House; Senate trades through the Senate eFD system. Both are free and public.
Is congressional trading data free?
Yes. The underlying filings are public records. Trackers add value by organizing and analyzing them.
Can I see congressional trades in real time?
No. Trades are disclosed up to about 45 days after they happen, so all tracking reflects past, disclosed activity.