What Are Congressional Trade Disclosures (And Why Traders Track Them)?

The STOCK Act

In 2012, Congress passed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act — the STOCK Act — which requires members of Congress and their spouses to publicly disclose stock trades within 45 days of execution.

The intent was to prevent insider trading by legislators who have access to non-public information through their committee work and classified briefings.

The Data Is Public

Every disclosure is filed with the House Clerk or Senate Foreign Relations Committee and made publicly available. Services like Quiver Quantitative, Capitol Trades, and others aggregate and publish this data in near-real-time.

Why It's a Trading Signal

Congressional members and their families have historically outperformed the market. Some researchers put the alpha at 5–10% annually. The debate continues about whether this represents genuine information advantage or survivorship bias.

Regardless of the cause, the pattern is trackable and historically significant enough that quantitative funds include it as a signal.

The Famous Examples

The trades that attracted the most attention:

None of these resulted in criminal charges. All of them were legal under existing law. All of them are publicly disclosed.

How Enki Uses This Signal

Enki scans congressional disclosure filings as they become available. When a disclosure shows a buy from a member with relevant committee oversight — particularly on tech, defense, or healthcare stocks — it factors into the signal calculation.

Congressional disclosures are one of Enki's 7 signal sources. They're not acted on alone — a disclosure only moves the needle when it aligns with RSI, MACD, sentiment, and other signals simultaneously.

This is exactly the kind of institutional-grade signal that retail investors have never had access to before — until it became publicly available and systematically trackable.