The Cost of Copying Congress: What the 45-Day Delay Takes Away

The problem with copy-trading Congress

Apps and social media accounts let people copy the trades of members of Congress. The catch is timing. Under the STOCK Act of 2012, a member has up to 45 days after learning of a trade to report it, and some file later. By the time anyone outside can see a purchase, the stock may already have moved. So the question that matters to a copier is not "did Congress beat the market?" but "would I have, buying on the day the report came out?"

For each purchase we take two starting points: the week of the trade (what the member got) and the week of the filing (the earliest a copier could act). Both end at the same place, the member's next reported sale of that stock, or our latest weekly price if they still hold it. The gap between the two results is the cost of the delay.

The answer

For the typical purchase, the stock moved +5.5% from the trade week and +2.7% from the report week. The median gap, per trade, was +0.5% (trimmed average +2.1%), with a median reporting delay of 27 days. The delay has cost little for the typical trade, though individual trades vary a lot.

Does reporting faster help?

Median moves of the stock, not the members' profit. Each purchase counts once, whatever its size.

The fastest reporters

Members with at least five measured purchases and the shortest median reporting delay, which makes them the easiest to follow: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (3 days), Rep. Robert E. Latta (4 days), Sen. John Fetterman (4 days), Rep. Rick Larsen (8 days), Rep. James Comer (8 days), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (10 days), Sen. Gary C. Peters (12 days), Rep. David J. Taylor (13 days).

Where waiting cost the most

The single trades a copier missed most

How to read it

Prices are weekly, so a trade and its report in the same week show no gap. Trades by a spouse or dependent child count the same as the member's own, as the reports do, and the law gives only a dollar range, so we treat every purchase equally. Try your own version with the What if you copied Congress? tool, which shows both starting points for any member.

Examples

Academic studies have reached different answers about whether members of Congress beat the market. A 2004 study by Alan Ziobrowski and colleagues found senators' purchases did better than the market in the 1990s; a 2013 study by Andrew Eggers and Jens Hainmueller found that House members' portfolios did not, on average. Neither measured what a copier could actually earn, which depends on the reporting delay this page measures.

Explain it like I'm 13

Your friend tells you which trading card he bought, but only a month later. By then, if the card got popular, its price has already gone up, and you pay more than he did. This page measures how much "a month late" costs when you copy Congress.

Built from SEC Form 4 and 13F filings and STOCK Act reports as read by WallStPal, rebuilt every day. Prices are weekly closing prices derived from SEC data and can lag by a few weeks. Results describe what stocks did, not anyone's profit, and are not investment advice. See our method.