Members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell stocks, but they have to tell the public when they do. The reports are free and public, though they are spread across two websites, written in two different formats and filed on a delay. This guide explains where to find them, how to read them and what they leave out.
Two chambers, two websites
The House and the Senate each run their own disclosure system.
House of Representatives. Reports are filed with the Clerk of the House and posted at disclosures-clerk.house.gov. You can search by last name, state, district and year. Most reports open as PDF files. Reports filed electronically contain typed text. Reports filed on paper are scanned images, which are harder for software to read.
Senate. Reports are filed with the Secretary of the Senate and posted in the electronic financial disclosure database at efdsearch.senate.gov. You have to tick a box agreeing to the terms of use before searching. Electronic Senate reports display as a web table. Paper filings appear as scanned pages.
The two systems use slightly different labels for the same information. Our guide to reading a PTR maps the columns of each.
PTR versus annual financial disclosure
Members file two main kinds of report.
Periodic transaction report (PTR). This lists individual trades: purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, options and similar securities worth more than $1,000. Under the STOCK Act of 2012, a PTR is due within 30 days after the member is notified of a trade, and no later than 45 days after the trade (House Committee on Ethics). PTRs are what most trackers, including ours, use.
Annual financial disclosure report. Senators who served 61 days or more in the previous year must file one by May 15 (U.S. Senate), and House members follow the same yearly cycle. It lists assets and their value ranges, income, debts, outside positions, gifts and travel. It shows what a member owns at the end of the year, including holdings never traded, but it comes out many months after the fact.
A useful habit: use PTRs to see what changed recently, and the annual report to see the whole household picture.
Whose trades are included
A PTR covers trades by the member, the member’s spouse and dependent children, plus joint accounts. The owner column tells you which. On House reports, a blank means the member, SP means spouse, JT means joint and DC means dependent child. Senate reports spell these out as Self, Spouse, Joint and Child.
Some assets do not need a PTR at all. The Senate’s instructions exclude widely held investment funds such as publicly traded mutual funds, cash accounts, U.S. Treasury bills, notes and bonds, real estate, and holdings in a qualified blind trust (Senate Ethics Committee PTR instructions). Those may still show up on the annual report.
Amount ranges
No report gives an exact dollar figure. Each trade falls into a bracket, such as:
- $1,001 to $15,000
- $15,001 to $50,000
- $50,001 to $100,000
- $100,001 to $250,000
- $250,001 to $500,000
- $500,001 to $1,000,000
- $1,000,001 to $5,000,000
- $5,000,001 to $25,000,000
Larger brackets exist above that. The reported amount is the gross price of the purchase or sale, not the profit or loss. When adding up trades, work out a low total from the bottom of each range and a high total from the top. Never treat the midpoint as the real figure.
Late filings and the $200 fee
A PTR filed more than 30 days after its due date brings a $200 late fee, paid to the U.S. Treasury. The ethics committees can waive the fee in some circumstances (Senate Ethics Committee). The law allows no extensions for PTRs.
The fee is small next to the size of many trades, and news organizations have documented many late reports. On WallStPal, a trade reported more than 45 days after it happened is marked late. Late can have a harmless cause, such as an adviser failing to tell the member, so we treat it as a fact about timing, not as evidence of anything else.
What the data can and cannot show
It can show:
- which stocks a member or their family bought or sold, and on what date
- the rough size of each trade
- how long the member took to report it
- patterns over time, such as heavy trading in one industry
It cannot show:
- the exact amount or price
- why the trade was made, or who made the decision (a member, a spouse or an adviser)
- whether the member had any nonpublic information
- trades in excluded assets such as mutual funds or blind trusts
- the member’s full portfolio at any given moment
Any return figure built from these reports, including the estimates on our track records page, rests on ranges and assumed prices. Treat it as a rough guide.
A checklist for reading any trade
When a congressional trade makes news, these questions help you judge it before reacting:
- Who owned it? Check the owner column. A spouse’s trade or a joint account is reported on the member’s form but may be managed by someone else.
- How big was it? Look at the range, then compare it with the member’s other trades. A $1,001 to $15,000 purchase is routine for many members.
- How late was the report? Count the days from trade date to filing date. Anything over 45 days missed the deadline.
- Was it a stock or an option? Options lines need the description to understand. A purchase of calls, an exercise and an expiration all look different.
- Is it part of a pattern? One trade says little. Repeated buying in one company or industry over months says more, especially next to the member’s committee assignments.
- What else was on the report? A single PTR often lists many trades. A sale reported alongside purchases may be rebalancing.
None of these answers will tell you why a trade was made. They tell you how much weight a single headline deserves.
How to track trades without visiting two sites
- Start on the Congress page, which combines electronic House and Senate reports into one table with the member, owner, stock, range, trade date, filing date and days to report. Every row links to the original report.
- Find your own representative and senators by entering a ZIP code, or browse members by state.
- Open a member’s page to see their full history and press Follow. With a free My Desk account, their new trades show up in your activity feed and weekly summary.
- For people who are not members of Congress, such as cabinet officials, see officials.
Examples
2021: about 130 trades reported late. In July 2021, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama filed a report covering roughly 130 stock and option trades made from January through May that had not been disclosed within the 45-day window, with a combined value between $894,000 and more than $3.5 million, CNBC reported. A spokeswoman said financial advisers managed his portfolio without his day-to-day involvement and that he had not known the trades needed to be disclosed. Asked whether he paid the $200 late fee, she said the office was “working with the Committee to ensure full compliance.” The case shows the late-filing rule in action and how wide the value range of a batch of trades can be.
2025: reading the ranges on a big report. A PTR from Representative Nancy Pelosi certified on January 17, 2025 (House Clerk PDF) lists a spouse sale of 31,600 Apple shares in the $5,000,001 to $25,000,000 bracket and a sale of 10,000 Nvidia shares in the $1,000,001 to $5,000,000 bracket, along with several options purchases. Even with share counts in the description, the dollar amount is still a range. Our Pelosi guide walks through every line.
Where the data comes from
- House reports: Clerk of the House financial disclosures
- Senate reports: Senate electronic financial disclosure search
- Filing deadlines: House Committee on Ethics and U.S. Senate financial disclosure page
- Late fee and exclusions: Senate Ethics Committee PTR instructions
For background on the law, read how the STOCK Act works.
Explain it like I’m 13
Members of Congress are allowed to buy stocks, just like your parents might. But since they make laws that can move stock prices, they have to post a public note whenever they trade.
The House posts its notes on one website and the Senate on another. The notes say who traded (the member, a husband or wife, or a kid), what they traded, the date, and a rough price range like “between $1,000 and $15,000.”
They have up to about six weeks to post the note. If they’re late, they pay a $200 fee, which is less than many trades are worth.
What the notes don’t tell you is why someone traded or whether they knew something secret. They’re a list of what happened, not an explanation.
Questions about this guide? Pal reads it with you and answers in plain English.
WallStPal explains public filings. Nothing here is investment advice. Editorial policy · Corrections