How to Track Disclosed Trades by Members of Congress, Officials and Insiders
The Free Sources, the Apps, and What the Research Says

Every app that tracks officials’ trades starts from the same place: public filings. The filings are free to read. The look-up apps add search, alerts and charts, and some products put money into the trades. What no app can add is speed, because a trade only shows up once it has been filed.

This page shows who you can track and how, what the apps’ terms allow, what the research says, and where the bills stand as of 2 October 2026.

Nothing here is investment, financial or legal advice.

The short answer

You can follow the disclosed trades of seven groups. They are US House members, senators, senior executive-branch officials, federal judges, company insiders, large investment managers, and anyone who owns more than 5% of a company. All of it is public and free on official US sites.

Two things shape everything below. Congressional reports arrive late, up to 45 days after the trade. And they give values as ranges, not exact amounts.

A precise figure built from those ranges is an estimate; see Numbers that mislead.

Who you can track, and exactly how

What every US official’s trade report has in common

The rules come from the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 and the STOCK Act of 2012, and now sit in chapter 131 of Title 5 of the US Code. The trade reports are called periodic transaction reports, or PTRs.

• What. Any purchase, sale or exchange over $1,000 in stocks, bonds, commodities futures or other securities. The House form covers trades by the filer, the filer’s spouse and dependent children.

• When. No later than 30 days after the filer is told of a trade, and never later than 45 days after the trade itself.

• How much. Values go in bands. On the House form they run from $1,001–$15,000 up to over $50,000,000. The law also lets a filer give the exact dollar amount instead.

• What is left out. The House form excludes trades in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and in the federal Thrift Savings Plan. Holdings in a qualified blind trust need not be reported, nor are trades solely between a filer, a spouse and dependent children.

Late filing. The House form sets a $200 penalty for anyone who files more than 30 days late. The ethics office may waive the fee in extraordinary circumstances.

Larger penalties need more. The Attorney General can seek a civil penalty against someone who “knowingly and willfully” fails to file or report. The ceiling is $50,000 in the statute, and $75,540 for violations after 2 November 2015 under OGE’s inflation adjustment. Knowingly and willfully falsifying a report can also be prosecuted, with up to a year in prison.

US House members

Where: the Clerk’s Financial Disclosure Reports site, with yearly downloads from 2008 to 2026. No extensions are granted for PTRs.

1. Open the page and choose the Search tab. It shows a notice of four unlawful uses (quoted under “The rules on using the data”) but no box to tick.

2. Enter a last name and a filing year; you can also filter by state and district.

3. Or download a year’s ZIP file; its index marks periodic transaction reports with the filing type “P”.

4. Open the report. Each line shows the owner, the asset, the type (purchase, sale or exchange), the transaction date, the date the filer was notified and the value band.

Shows and doesn’t: Filers may mark an asset SP (spouse), DC (dependent child) or JT (joint), but they are not required to. A report shows a band, not a price or a reason.

US senators

Where: the Senate’s eFD site, which holds reports filed from 2012 to the present for senators, former senators and candidates. A senator’s reports stay up for six years after the senator leaves Congress.

1. Open the eFD home page. It quotes the same four limits on use.

2. Tick the box: “I understand the prohibitions on obtaining and use of financial disclosure reports.” The search opens after that; we stopped at this step, so we do not describe the search form.

Senior executive-branch officials and appointees

What and when: the President, the Vice President and senior officials file trade reports (OGE Form 278-T) under the same 30- and 45-day rule. OGE is the Office of Government Ethics.

1. Open OGE’s Officials’ Individual Disclosures Search Collection and click the banner that reads “I affirm: I am aware of these prohibitions and wish to proceed.”

2. The table lists each document’s date, title, type, name, agency and level; trade reports are listed with the type “278 Transaction” (OGE’s form is the 278-T).

3. For Senate-confirmed officials, OGE says to fill out its online Form 201 if prompted. For other officials, you complete Form 201 and submit it to their agency.

Doesn’t show: older reports. OGE generally keeps a 278-T for 7 years.

Federal judges

What and when: a law of 13 May 2022 added federal judges, bankruptcy judges and magistrate judges, for transactions from 11 August 2022. Judges must report the details of trades over $1,000 within 45 days.

1. Open the courts’ financial disclosure database. It gives free online access to the financial disclosure reports filed by all judges. Read its statement of the use limits.

2. Click “Begin Registration” and give your name, occupation, email, telephone, address and whom you represent. You must register each time you use the system.

3. Reports filed from 2022 onwards are online; earlier ones can be requested.

Company insiders: officers, directors and 10% owners

What and when: officers, directors and holders of more than 10% of a class of shares file three forms. Form 3 is due within 10 days after the person becomes an insider. Form 4, which covers options too, is due within two business days after the transaction date. Form 5 is filed once a year.

Form 4 shows the amount bought or sold and the price per share.

1. On sec.gov, type the company’s name or ticker symbol in the search bar at the top of the home page.

2. On the company’s filings, limit the results by type of filing and choose Form 4.

3. Or use EDGAR full-text search. It can search by the reporter’s last name, among other fields, and can be limited to one form type through “more search options”.

Shows and doesn’t: each transaction is coded to show what kind it is. So a grant from the company or an option exercise reads differently from a purchase on an exchange.

Large investment managers (13F)

What and when: managers with $100 million or more in Section 13(f) securities file Form 13F each quarter, due within 45 days after it ends. A holding can be up to about four and a half months old when it appears (a quarter of about 90 days plus 45).

1. Search EDGAR for the manager by name.

2. Limit the filings to type 13F-HR, which the SEC describes as an institutional investment manager report.

Activist and large stakeholders (13D/13G)

What and when: anyone owning more than 5% of a class of shares. An investor with control intent files Schedule 13D; others file Schedule 13G. Under amendments the SEC adopted in October 2023, a first 13D is due in five business days instead of ten.

1. Search EDGAR for the company or the investor.

2. Limit the filings to Schedule 13D or 13G.

Officials outside the US

In the three systems we checked, interests are public, but individual trades are not published one by one as US PTRs are.

• United Kingdom. The Register of Members’ Financial Interests page offers “View the Register”, “Find an MP”, and an API under the Open Parliament Licence. MPs must register any change in their registrable interests within 28 days.

• European Parliament. Open an MEP’s page from the full list, then the Declarations tab, where the “Declaration of private interests” and its revisions are posted. MEPs declare holdings “where there are potential public policy implications or where that holding gives the Member significant influence”.

• Canada. The Ethics Commissioner’s public registry filters by role, such as “Ministers and Ministers of State”, and by declaration type, such as “Summary Statements (Act)”. Ministers and other “reporting public office holders” must divest publicly traded shares within 120 days, by sale or a blind trust.

The rules on using the data

The official sites are the original records, free to read, and the base every app below draws on. They still set limits. For congressional and executive-branch reports, the statute says:

It shall be unlawful for any person to obtain or use a report— (A) for any unlawful purpose; (B) for any commercial purpose, other than by news and communications media for dissemination to the general public; (C) for determining or establishing the credit rating of any individual; or (D) for use, directly or indirectly, in the solicitation of money for any political, charitable, or other purpose.

In short: no unlawful use, no commercial use except by the news media, no credit ratings and no fundraising.

The Attorney General can bring a civil action, with a penalty “not to exceed $10,000” in the statute. Federal civil penalties are raised for inflation. OGE’s regulation sets the ceiling at $25,132 for violations after 2 November 2015. That is the figure on OGE’s banner and in the House Ethics Committee’s 2025 guide.

How far “commercial purpose” reaches, for instance to a paid app or a fund built on the filings, is not something we could settle. We found no court ruling on it.

The two exchange-traded funds described below raise the point themselves, and list it as a risk in their prospectuses. The passage begins: “Absent a definitive determination as to whether the Adviser’s review and analysis of data … constitutes ‘obtain[ing] or us[ing]’ a PTR for a prohibited ‘commercial purpose’”.

EDGAR is different. The SEC says anyone can access and download the information for free. The SEC pages we read set no comparable limit on EDGAR data, only fair-access rules: a maximum of 10 requests a second, and a request to declare your user agent.

The apps and websites, and what their terms allow

They fall into two groups, listed in no order of preference. Look-up tools show the filings with search, charts and alerts. Investment products put money into the trades for you. Prices were read on 2 October 2026 unless stated, in US dollars.

We read each tool’s terms of use for three things: linking and naming, reusing its data or screenshots, and attribution. Here is what they say, taken together.

• One expressly allows links to its home page only, and forbids deep links and screenshots on other sites.

• None of the others mentions linking to it.

• None forbids being named. SECform4’s terms do say its trademarks “may not be used in any way without written consent”. They also say it “will pursue legal action against anyone who misappropriates our name or marks for commercial use”. We use the name only to identify the site.

• None grants a right to republish its data or screenshots, and none asks for attribution.

This page links to and describes these tools, quoting short passages from their own pages and terms. It republishes no tool’s data, charts or screenshots.

Several of these sites describe their data as real-time. In each case we read, that refers to how quickly a filing is posted once it appears; the trade itself can be weeks older. The word describes the site’s speed, not the trade’s age.

Look-up tools

Capitol Trades (2iQ Research, Frankfurt). Free. It says it uses reports from the Senate’s eFD site and the official website of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Its trades table shows columns for Published, Traded and Filed After, plus the owner and a size range.

Terms: its terms (last updated 14 February 2022) do not address linking or reusing its content.

Quiver Quantitative. Congress trades, Form 4 insider filings, 13F holdings, lobbying and more. It says it downloads the disclosures and picks out the stock trades. There is a free Visitor plan; Premium was $25 a month, or $300 billed yearly.

Its disclaimer says content “may be lagged, outdated, or otherwise inaccurate”. It discloses copy-trading or marketing partnership agreements with Autopilot, Quantbase (Surmount) and Polymarket.

Terms: use is for “personal, non-commercial use only”. It says “you may link to our homepage, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation”. It does not allow “deep linking, in-line linking, or posting screenshots on any other site”, and it may withdraw its linking permission. We link only to its home page.

Its site would not load for us on 2 October 2026, so these details are as archived in September 2026.

Unusual Whales. Mainly an options-data platform. “Politician Trade Information” is listed in its Retail Basic plan, at $50 a month, or $504 a year billed annually. Free accounts see delayed data.

Terms: “You MAY NOT copy, modify, scrape, reproduce, republish, distribute, or transmit any of the website material for ANY reason.”

WhaleWisdom. 13F holdings, with all 13F filings since 2001. It notes that 13Fs include only long positions in US securities. A free tier shows two years of 13F data; Standard is $90 per quarter and Pro $150 per quarter.

Terms: a licence “only for internal business use or personal, noncommercial use”, with no publishing or redistributing.

SECform4.com (SecForm4.Com, Inc., Houston). It processes Forms 3, 4, 5, 13D, 13G and 13F filed with the SEC’s EDGAR database. It says it is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by the SEC. Its home page offers free access, with advanced tools for power users; we found no price.

Terms: “personal, non-commercial use”, and no framing without written consent.

Gone or stale. The free Senate Stock Watcher and House Stock Watcher sites did not resolve for us on 2 October 2026; the latest archive copies we found date from May 2025.

Products that invest your money

Autopilot (Autopilot Advisers, LLC, “an SEC-registered investment adviser”). It links to your brokerage account and trades it to follow portfolios, some built from disclosed trades.

Its brochure of 31 March 2026 says clients who use only its Basic Tier pay no advisory fee.

For its Premium Tier it lists a fee for each “Pilot” followed (the person or entity a portfolio is based on). The fee is $29.99 to $199.99 per quarter, or $99.99 to $699.99 a year.

There is also a planned asset fee of 0.25% to 1% (currently set at 0.00%). The minimum is $500 per portfolio.

Its FAQ says positions update “Immediately!” after a report is filed. Its brochure adds that “there may be a length of time between when the Pilot makes a trade and that trade is publicly disclosed”.

The brochure also discloses conflicts of interest. With margin (trading with borrowed money), it “will receive a higher advisory fee when a client uses margin”. A broker pays it $50 to $5,000 for referred clients who open and fund accounts.

Some Pilots may own part of its parent company, and its staff may trade securities held in its portfolios. Pilots pay it fees to take part in its marketplace, and promotions may reward clients or others who refer new clients.

Terms: a licence “for your own personal internal use”, which excludes “copying, duplication, scraping, display or derivative use”.

dub (advice from dub Advisors, LLC, “an SEC-registered investment adviser”). Its help centre says “politicians can wait as much as 45 days after transacting to file their trade report”. So, it says, “our awareness of a politician’s trade often lags significantly behind the actual transaction”.

Its own blog, updated 22 June 2026, gives $9.99 a month or $89.99 a year for the subscription. There is also a percentage-based fee, generally 0%–2.5% a year, on assets put into a Premium portfolio.

Terms: “You may use the Platform only for personal and non-commercial purposes”, and copying content is prohibited.

NANC and GOP (two exchange-traded funds advised by Tidal Investments). NANC buys what Democratic members report, GOP what Republican members report. Because PTRs give ranges, each fund weights its holdings by the midpoint of the ranges.

Since 31 July 2026 they carry new names. The adviser now takes its information from the PTRs directly, instead of using Unusual Whales as its data provider. Their prospectuses of 28 January 2026 give total annual operating expenses of 0.72% (NANC) and 0.73% (GOP).

Both prospectuses state: “the Fund will not purchase or sell securities at the same time as members of Congress.” These are public SEC filings.

Left out: OpenInsider, a screener of Form 4 filings. Its terms page showed no terms text when we opened it, so we could not check what it allows.

Do you gain anything by following these trades?

The studies disagree. The early ones found an edge for members of Congress. Most of the studies of the years since 2012 that we read find none on average, and copying a trade after it is filed has the least evidence of all.

One term helps here: a basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.

The early case for an edge. One study found that in 1993–1998, a portfolio copying US senators’ purchases beat the market by 85 basis points a month (JFQA, 2004). A House study of 1985–2001 found purchases beat the market by 55 basis points a month, about 6% a year (Business and Politics, 2011).

The reinterpretation. A 2013 study reinterpreted the studies of 1985–2001 and analysed 2004–2008 itself. It concluded that in neither period did members of Congress trade with an information advantage. For 2004–2008, it found the average member would have earned higher returns in a passive index fund (Journal of Politics, 2013).

Around and after the STOCK Act. A 2019 study of 2004–2010 found the highest abnormal returns in the trades of powerful Republican members. That sits against the 2013 study’s finding for 2004–2008. It also found that the positive abnormal returns disappeared after the STOCK Act passed in 2012 (Financial Review, 2019).

Another study found that stocks senators bought in 2012–March 2020 on average did slightly worse than stocks in the same industry and size. It was an NBER working paper in 2020, later published in the Journal of Public Economics. NBER is the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

A 2026 NBER working paper covers all members and their families in 2012–2023. It finds that on average, members’ portfolios do worse than market benchmarks, or at best match them.

By contrast, a 2025 NBER working paper compares lawmakers who later rise to leadership positions with matched peers. It finds the leaders “outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension”. Neither of these two newer working papers has been peer-reviewed as far as we found.

The follower’s problem. A copier can act only after the filing. A peer-reviewed study of the two funds described above, which buy only after the filings appear, found that neither did significantly better than market returns (Economics Letters, 2025; abstract read).

A larger analysis that starts the clock at the filing is self-published by a company that sells congressional-trading data. Covering 17,859 disclosure events from 2020 to August 2025, it reports that copying buys or sells after disclosure trailed the S&P 500.

Where it leans, and why. A 2013 reinterpretation contested the early positive results. One later study found an edge before 2012, for powerful members only. The studies of the years since 2012 that we read mostly find no average edge.

The leaders finding comes from one working paper about one group of members. Copying after disclosure, the question closest to what the apps offer, has the least evidence: one study of two funds and one self-published analysis. None of these group findings says anything about any individual member.

See also How to read a study and Cognitive biases, checked.

Bills to ban congressional stock trading

As of 2 October 2026, no law bans members of Congress from trading stocks, and none requires them to sell what they own on taking office.

• H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act. Introduced on 12 January 2026; passed the House on 22 July 2026, 232–198. It would bar members, spouses and dependent children, with some exceptions, from buying publicly traded securities and derivatives.

  It would allow sales only after a public notice 7 to 14 calendar days ahead. It would also set a fee of $2,000 or 10% of the value of the transaction, whichever is greater, plus any net gain.

  The House-passed text also contains a separate section headed “Requiring voters to provide photo identification.” In the Senate, on 30 September 2026, cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill was not invoked, 53–47. Cloture is the Senate’s vote on whether to bring debate to a close.

• S. 1498, the HONEST Act. Reported by the Senate homeland security committee with a substitute and placed on the Senate calendar on 10 December 2025; no floor vote since. The Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congress’s own research office, summarises it as barring members, spouses and dependents from owning, buying or trading covered assets.

• S.Res. 708, agreed to on 30 April 2026 by unanimous consent, changed the Senate’s own rules. It bars senators, Senate officers and Senate employees from participating in prediction markets. It does not cover stocks, and CRS noted that House rules currently have no similar provision.

What we couldn’t confirm

• Whether “commercial purpose” in 5 U.S.C. §13107(c) covers paid apps or funds built on the reports. We found no court ruling.

• The Senate eFD search form, which opens only after you tick the agreement box, and the judges’ database search, which opens after registration. We did neither.

• OpenInsider’s terms, which did not display when we opened them.

• Whether the early studies measured returns from the trade date or the disclosure date; the abstracts we read do not say.

• The US Code’s own site was under maintenance on 2 October 2026, so we read the statute in Cornell’s copy.

How to use this

These are habits for reading the records, not advice about trading.

1. Go to the filing. When a post or an app makes a claim about a trade, the document behind it is free to read.

2. Check two dates. The transaction date and the filing date can be weeks apart.

3. Read a range as a range. A purchase of “$1,000,001–$5,000,000” could sit anywhere in that band. Totals, portfolio values and returns built from ranges are estimates.

4. Look at who owned it and what it was. SP, DC and JT matter, and an option is not the same as a share.

5. Notice what kind of study it is. A journal paper, a working paper that has not been peer-reviewed and a company’s own analysis are different kinds of evidence.

6. Let a product describe itself. A fund’s prospectus or an adviser’s Form ADV brochure sets out its fees, its conflicts and the reporting delay. For a famous case of crowd trading and its limits, see MOASS explained.

The same habit works for any claim built on a public record: find the record, check its dates, and see what it can’t show.

Sources

• 5 U.S.C. §§13104, 13105, 13106 and 13107, as reproduced by the Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, read 2 October 2026 (with notes on Pub. L. 112-105, 112-178, 117-125 and 117-286).
• Committee on Ethics, US House of Representatives, Periodic Transaction Report form and instructions, and 2025 Instruction Guide (published 8 July 2026).
• Congressional Research Service, R48641, Proposals to Limit Member of Congress Financial Activities, updated 29 July 2026; 2 U.S.C. §166, as reproduced by the Legal Information Institute.
• Clerk of the House, Financial Disclosure Reports and its yearly index files; US Senate, eFD search home page and Senate floor log, 30 September 2026; Standing Rules of the Senate, Rule XXII, Senate Manual (S. Doc. 113-1).
• eCFR, 5 CFR 2634.701 and 5 CFR 2634.703 (90 FR 3612, 15 January 2025).
• Office of Government Ethics, home page, public disclosure quick-start and Officials’ Individual Disclosures Search Collection.
• Administrative Office of the US Courts, Judiciary Financial Disclosure Reports, announcement of 7 November 2022 and the financial disclosure database.
• SEC, Insider Transactions and Forms 3, 4, and 5; Using EDGAR to Research Investments; How do I use EDGAR?; Form 13F FAQ; press release 2023-219; Accessing EDGAR Data; Full-Text Search FAQ; EDGAR APIs; Investor.gov, Insider Trading, Basis Point and Margin Account.
• Bill status for H.R. 7008, S. 1498 and S.Res. 708 from the Congress.gov records published on govinfo; H.R. 7008, engrossed in House.
• A. J. Ziobrowski, P. Cheng, J. W. Boyd and B. J. Ziobrowski, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 39(4), 2004, doi:10.1017/s0022109000003161; A. J. Ziobrowski, J. W. Boyd, P. Cheng and B. J. Ziobrowski, Business and Politics 13(1), 2011, doi:10.2202/1469-3569.1308.
• A. C. Eggers and J. Hainmueller, “Capitol Losses”, Journal of Politics 75(2), 2013, doi:10.1017/s0022381613000194.
• S. Karadas, Financial Review 54(1), 2019, doi:10.1111/fire.12180.
• V. Baulkaran and P. Jain, “U.S Congress members’ trading activities: A case of NANC and KRUZ”, Economics Letters 250, 2025, doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112263 (abstract via RePEc).
• W. Belmont, B. Sacerdote, R. Sehgal and I. Van Hoek, NBER working paper 26975, 2020; published in the Journal of Public Economics 207, 2022.
• NBER working papers 34524 (Wei and Zhou, November 2025) and 35041 (Chen and Sacerdote, April 2026); NBER, About the NBER.
• Equibles, “What happens after Congress buys or sells a stock”, 24 August 2026 (self-published).
• Capitol Trades, disclaimer, trades table and terms; Quiver Quantitative (home page; its terms allow links to the home page only), with details from Internet Archive copies of its home page (24 September 2026), congress trading page (20 September 2026), disclaimers (4 September 2026) and terms (23 September 2026); Unusual Whales, pricing and terms; WhaleWisdom, FAQ, pricing and terms; SECform4.com about, home page and terms.
• Autopilot, FAQ, disclaimer, terms and Form ADV Part 2A (31 March 2026); dub, home page, Politician Portfolios, blog post of 22 June 2026 and terms of use.
• Tidal Trust I, summary prospectuses for NANC and GOP (28 January 2026) and the supplement of 31 July 2026.
• UK Parliament, Register of Members’ Financial Interests and Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules (HC 1083, 2023); European Parliament, MEPs’ full list and Code of Conduct for Members, Annex I; Canada, Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, public registry, and Conflict of Interest Act, current to 21 September 2026.

Checked October 2026. What we read: the statute text and its notes; the House Ethics forms and guide; the CRS report; the official House, Senate, OGE, courts, SEC, UK, European Parliament and Canadian pages listed, following each walkthrough as far as it goes without registering or ticking an agreement; the bill records, the House-passed bill text and the Senate floor log; the study abstracts and NBER pages; and each tool’s own pages, terms, prospectus or brochure. What we could not confirm is listed above. If you can show any of this wrong, with a source, we want to see it.