To track stock trades made by members of Congress, start with the two official government portals: the House Office of the Clerk’s Financial Disclosure database at disclosures-clerk.house.gov and the Senate’s Electronic Financial Disclosure system at efdsearch.senate.gov. Both are free, both are public, and both post the same Periodic Transaction Reports that legislators are required to file within 45 days of a trade. If you want the data in a more searchable form, third-party platforms like Capitol Trades, Unusual Whales, and Quiver Quantitative scrape those portals and repackage the filings into dashboards you can filter by ticker, party, or member.
The Two Official Portals
The House site, run by the Office of the Clerk, publishes Periodic Transaction Reports along with annual financial disclosure statements for all representatives, House officers, and certain staff.1Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives. Financial Disclosure Reports The Senate runs its own separate system through the Secretary of the Senate.
Both work the same way. Type in a legislator’s last name, pick a filing year, and filter the report type. Choose “Periodic Transaction Report” to see individual trades rather than the broader annual disclosure. Results come back as a list of filings with the filer’s name, filing date, and a link to the document. Most House filings now display as structured electronic tables. Some older reports and Senate filings still open as scanned PDFs of hand-signed forms.
You can sort by filing date to surface recent activity, and you can download or print any document directly. The interface is clunkier than you’d expect from a public database, and there’s a reason for that: Congress rolled back part of the STOCK Act’s transparency provisions in 2013, repealing the requirement that these databases be fully searchable and sortable without a login.2Congress.gov. S.716 – 113th Congress That’s the gap third-party trackers fill.
What a Periodic Transaction Report Actually Shows
Each report lists the asset traded (usually with a ticker symbol for public stocks), the transaction date, and whether it was a purchase, sale, or exchange.3eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.309 – Periodic Reporting of Transactions It also identifies whether the trade was made by the member personally, by a spouse, or by a dependent child.
Values are reported in ranges, not exact amounts. The brackets start at $1,001 to $15,000 and step up through $15,001 to $50,000, $50,001 to $100,000, and on to over $50,000,000 at the top.4eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.301 – Interests in Property A senator whose PTR shows a sale in the $100,001–$250,000 bracket could have sold anywhere in that range. Transactions of $1,000 or less don’t trigger a filing at all.3eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.309 – Periodic Reporting of Transactions
Every Senator and Representative is required to file. The STOCK Act of 2012 set the current reporting timeline and confirmed that members are not exempt from insider trading laws.5Congress.gov. S.2038 – STOCK Act – 112th Congress
The Reporting Delay You Can’t Get Around
Filers have 30 days from receiving notice of a reportable transaction, but no later than 45 days after the trade itself. A representative who buys a stock on January 2 has until roughly mid-February to file. The report then takes additional time to appear on the portal. By the time you see it, the trade may be six or seven weeks old.
This is the biggest limitation of the whole system, and no tracking tool can fix it. Third-party sites can only publish filings as fast as the government posts them. Some members file well before the deadline; many push it. When a filing lands with a transaction date weeks earlier, that’s the rule working as written.
Missing the deadline triggers a $200 late filing fee per report, which can be waived for extraordinary circumstances such as the filer never receiving notification.6eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.704 – Late Filing Fee Knowingly falsifying or failing to file a disclosure can bring civil penalties up to $50,000, and the STOCK Act confirms members are subject to the same insider trading prohibitions as anyone else under Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act.5Congress.gov. S.2038 – STOCK Act – 112th Congress In practice, no member of Congress has ever been criminally prosecuted under the STOCK Act’s insider trading provisions, and the $200 fee is the consequence most filers actually face. Repeated late filings from the same legislator are worth noting on their own; that pattern is itself a data point.
What Won’t Show Up in the Filings
Not every investment a member holds generates a Periodic Transaction Report. A few categories are exempt entirely, and knowing them keeps you from reading too much into a quiet portfolio.
Qualified Blind Trusts
Members can place investments in a qualified blind trust, managed by an independent trustee approved by the Office of Government Ethics.7eCFR. Subpart D – Qualified Trusts The member receives only the aggregate market value each quarter and total annual income, with no information about specific holdings.8eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.408 – Administration of a Qualified Trust Because the member genuinely doesn’t know what’s inside, individual trades don’t appear on PTRs. The trust itself will show up on the annual disclosure; the trades inside it won’t.
Diversified Funds and Exempt Assets
Transactions in diversified mutual funds, most exchange-traded funds, and money market accounts don’t need to be reported, as long as the fund doesn’t concentrate holdings in a single industry, country, or state.9Office of Government Ethics. Refresher on Mutual Fund Exemptions A broad S&P 500 index fund is exempt. A sector-specific biotech ETF likely is not. Trades between a member and a spouse or dependent, and trades in bank accounts and Treasury securities at standard public rates, are also excluded.3eCFR. 5 CFR 2634.309 – Periodic Reporting of Transactions House Ethics Committee guidance does state that Treasury securities over $1,000 require reporting on a PTR, which sits in some tension with the broader regulatory exemption.10House Committee on Ethics. Instruction Guide for Financial Disclosure Statements and Periodic Transaction Reports
The practical effect: a member who invests almost entirely through diversified index funds will produce very few filings. A member trading individual stocks produces a steady stream.
Some Spouse Assets
Spouse and dependent-child trades generally have to be disclosed on the same PTRs, but a spouse’s assets can be omitted entirely if the member certifies a three-part test: the asset is the spouse’s sole financial interest, it’s not derived from the member’s income or activities, and the member doesn’t benefit from it financially. Reporting is also not required for a spouse living separately with the intent to end the marriage, or for alimony, child support, and property settlements from a divorce.11Ethics.senate.gov. Financial Disclosure Instructions for CY2024 Public filings alone may give an incomplete picture of a household’s investments.
Third-Party Trackers That Make the Data Usable
Because the official portals lost their searchability requirement in 2013, most people who track congressional trades regularly rely on third-party sites. Capitol Trades, Unusual Whales, and Quiver Quantitative are the most widely used. They scrape the House and Senate portals, parse the filings, and let you search by ticker, filter by party, sort by trade volume, and match a member’s activity against committee assignments or pending legislation.
Most offer alerts when a specific legislator files a new PTR. Free tiers usually cover basic search; paid subscriptions add real-time notifications, historical performance data, and spreadsheet exports. A few have launched investment products that mirror congressional trades, though the reporting delay means those strategies are always running weeks behind the actual activity.
The underlying data is identical to what’s on the official portals. If a specific trade matters to you, pull the original filing from disclosures-clerk.house.gov or efdsearch.senate.gov to confirm the details, since third-party sites occasionally misparse handwritten PDF entries.
What Could Change
In January 2026, House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil introduced the Stop Insider Trading Act, which would prohibit members, spouses, and dependent children from purchasing any security issued by a publicly traded company. Sales would still be allowed but would require a public notice filed with the House Clerk at least 7 to 14 days in advance.12Committee on House Administration. Chairman Steil Introduces Legislation to Ban Congressional Stock Trading Violations would trigger a fee of $2,000 or 10 percent of the investment’s value, whichever is greater, plus any net gain.
Similar bills have been introduced in earlier sessions without passing. If a ban does become law, the tracking landscape shifts: fewer individual purchases to monitor, and a new set of advance sale notices to watch instead. Until then, the PTR filings on the two official portals remain the primary source, and the third-party scrapers remain the fastest way to read them.