About
What is Capitol Trader?
Capitol Trader makes congressional stock trade disclosures easy to find, follow, and understand. We aggregate filings from the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and present them in a searchable, filterable format — no government portal required.
The Problem We Solve
Members of Congress are required to publicly disclose stock trades over $1,000 within 45 days under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012. The law exists. The data exists. But the official filing portals — the House Clerk's office and the Senate Office of Public Records — are difficult to search, inconsistently formatted, and require knowing exactly who to look up.
Capitol Trader ingests those official filings daily, normalizes the data into a consistent format, and makes it searchable by member, ticker, date, party, chamber, and sector. What takes 20 minutes of navigating government databases takes 20 seconds here.
What We Cover
- →Both chambers: U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives — every member is subject to STOCK Act reporting.
- →Both parties: Democratic, Republican, and Independent members. Congressional trading is bipartisan and we show all of it.
- →All transaction types: Purchases, sales, partial sales, and exchanges — as disclosed in official filings.
- →Growing trade history: Historical data is being backfilled from official filings, alongside daily ingestion of new disclosures.
- →Daily updates: New disclosures are ingested each day from official sources. The feed is typically current as of the previous business day.
What We Are Not
Capitol Trader is a transparency and research tool, not financial advice. Nothing on this site constitutes a recommendation to buy or sell any security.
We do not claim that any member of Congress has traded on inside information. The STOCK Act prohibits trading on material non-public information obtained through congressional duties — but proving that connection requires evidence beyond what disclosure data alone can establish.
Our role is to make the public record visible and searchable. What you conclude from it is your own judgment.
Data Sources
All trade data comes from official U.S. government sources:
- →House disclosures: House Clerk's Financial Disclosure portal (disclosures.house.gov)
- →Senate disclosures: Senate Office of Public Records (efts.senate.gov)
We parse, normalize, and deduplicate these filings. Member photos and biographical data are sourced from official congressional directories. If you spot a data error, contact us and we will investigate.
Known Limitations
- →45-day lag: The STOCK Act allows members up to 45 days to disclose trades. By the time a filing is public, the informational context at the time of trading is largely unavailable.
- →Amount ranges, not exact figures: Disclosures use brackets (e.g., "$50,001–$100,000") rather than exact dollar amounts. Precision analysis is limited.
- →Spouse and dependent child trades: Members must disclose trades by spouses and dependent children. Some filings attributed to a member reflect household trading rather than the member's personal decisions.
- →No intent data: Disclosures show what was traded and when — not why. We cannot establish motive or confirm whether committee knowledge influenced any specific trade.
- →Reporting delays and amendments: Some members file late or amend prior disclosures. Our database reflects what was officially filed as of each update.
Stay Updated
The Capitol Trader newsletter delivers a curated summary of notable new disclosures to your inbox. The trade feed is updated daily. The leaderboard ranks members by total disclosed transaction volume.