The best and worst traders in Congress
Ranked by the average return of every disclosed buy — not by headline picks. Who comes top, who comes bottom, and why the ranking is less impressive than it looks.
Research
Analysis and explainers built from Hillscore's own data and from the public record — how congressional trading disclosure actually works, and what the numbers show when you measure it properly.
Do congressional spouses have to disclose stock trades?
The STOCK Act requires members to disclose trades by a spouse or dependent child under their own name. Why the rule exists, and why "their" trades are not always theirs.
Why most published congressional trading returns are wrong
Execution price, measurement window, weighting and benchmarking all change the answer. Where the published figures diverge, why, and how much each choice is worth.
Do congressional stock trades actually beat the market?
Congressional buys look impressive in isolation — up 5.15% after three months. Measured against each stock's own sector, the edge disappears. The full numbers, and why the two answers differ.
How to read a congressional trade disclosure
A Periodic Transaction Report has five fields that matter and three that mislead. What each one means, what it leaves out, and the mistakes people make reading them.
Is congressional stock trading legal?
Yes, with disclosure requirements — unless it crosses into insider trading. What's legal, what isn't, why prosecutions are almost unheard of, and what may be about to change.
Is it too late to copy a congressional trade?
Disclosures arrive up to 45 days after the trade. We measured whether that lag is what kills the strategy — and it turns out not to be the main problem.
NANC vs. KRUZ: what these ETFs actually hold
Two ETFs track Congress's disclosed trades, split by party. How they work, what the party framing is worth, and what our own data says about the strategy underneath them.
The Stop Insider Trading Act, explained
H.R. 7008 passed the House 232–198 and would ban Congress from buying individual stocks. What it actually does, including the provisions most coverage misses.
What is the STOCK Act?
The 2012 law requiring Congress to disclose stock trades, explained: what it covers, the 45-day deadline, the $200 penalty, the 2013 rollback, and what it deliberately doesn't ban.
Congressional committee stock trades
Committee stock trades in Congress, counted and scored. Which congressional committees trade most in the industries they oversee, and how those trades actually performed.
Why congressional trades appear 45 days late
The STOCK Act gives members up to 45 days to disclose. Why the lag exists, how filings actually arrive, and whether the delay changes what the numbers are worth.
Every figure quoted in these pieces comes from the same pipeline that powers the rankings, and the method behind them is documented in full on the methodology page.
Data last updated .