What the law requires
Signed on April 4, 2012, the STOCK Act amended the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. Members of Congress, their senior staff and senior executive branch officials must file a periodic transaction report for any purchase, sale or exchange of stocks, bonds, commodity futures or other securities worth more than $1,000, by themselves, a spouse or a dependent child. The report is due within 30 days after the filer is notified of the transaction and in any case within 45 days of it. Transactions in widely held investment funds are exempt.
Amounts are reported in ranges rather than exact figures: $1,001 to $15,000, $15,001 to $50,000, $50,001 to $100,000, $100,001 to $250,000, $250,001 to $500,000, $500,001 to $1,000,000, and brackets above that. The owner is stated as the member, spouse, dependent child or joint. A late report carries a $200 fee, and the law states that members and staff owe a duty of trust and confidence to Congress and the public with respect to information they learn through their positions, so the insider trading laws apply to them.
Where the reports are, and how InsiderTell reads them
House reports are published by the Clerk of the House on its financial disclosure site, as PDFs, some of them scans of paper forms. Senate reports are on the Senate Office of Public Records’ electronic filing system, eFD, as web pages. InsiderTell polls both every hour, reads each report, matches the filer to a member record and stores every trade with its date, range, owner and source. Paper scans contain no text and are listed as paper reports without rows.
Reports arrive weeks after the trade, so InsiderTell measures what the stock did after the filing date, the first day anyone could have read it, and shows each member’s reporting lag. Options are measured on the underlying stock by the direction they imply.
Questions
How long do members of Congress have to disclose a stock trade?
Thirty days from being notified of the transaction and never more than 45 days after it. The ranges and dates in the report are what the law requires; exact amounts are not disclosed.
Are members of Congress allowed to trade stocks?
Yes. The STOCK Act requires disclosure and confirms that insider trading law applies to them; it does not ban trading. Proposals to ban individual stock ownership by members have been introduced repeatedly and had not become law as of the date on this page.
Why do congressional trades show a range instead of a price?
Because the law requires only the range the transaction falls in, for example $15,001 to $50,000. InsiderTell shows the range as filed and uses its lower bound where a single number is needed for sorting.