Blog

Research, explainers, and commentary on how Congress, corporate insiders, and institutions trade stocks.

• When corporate insiders and Congress buy the same stock: what the overlap does and doesn't tell you — Two disclosure regimes, two very different sets of motives. When a company officer and a member of Congress both buy the same stock, is the overlap a signal — or just arithmetic? Here's how to read it honestly.
• How to track Congress stock trades (5 methods, from free to instant) — A practical walkthrough of every way to follow Congressional stock trades — the official House and Senate portals, bulk data, RSS, ETFs, and trackers — with the trade-offs of each.
• SEC Form 4, explained: how to read an insider trading filing — Form 4 is how corporate insiders disclose their trades within two business days. Here's what every box and transaction code means, and how to tell a meaningful buy from routine compensation.
• 13F filings explained: how to read what hedge funds own — Every institutional manager over $100m must disclose their US equity holdings quarterly. Here's what a 13F contains, the four things it deliberately hides, and how to use it without being misled.
• Does copying Congressional stock trades actually work? — An honest look at whether following politicians' disclosed trades produces excess returns — what the academic research found, why the 45-day lag matters so much, and how to test it yourself.
• Insider selling vs insider buying: why one signal is real and the other mostly isn't — Insiders buy for one reason and sell for a dozen. Here's why insider purchases carry information, why most insider selling is noise, and how to spot the sales that do matter.
• The "Pelosi ETF": what NANC and KRUZ actually hold — Two ETFs track the disclosed stock holdings of Democratic and Republican members of Congress. Here's how NANC and KRUZ are built, what they can and can't do, and whether they beat doing it yourself.
• How to read a Periodic Transaction Report (PTR) — A field-by-field walkthrough of the disclosure form members of Congress use to report stock trades — including the amount ranges, the asset codes, and the five traps that produce wrong conclusions.
• Which politicians are the best stock traders? Why most rankings are wrong — Leaderboards of Congress's best-performing traders circulate constantly and almost all of them are methodologically broken. Here are the six errors that inflate them, and how a defensible ranking works.
• Do corporate insider buys predict stock returns? What the research says — When a CEO buys their own company's stock on the open market, is that a signal worth trading on? Decades of academic research say yes — with important caveats. Here's the evidence.
• Best Congress stock-trading trackers in 2026: a fair comparison — Capitol Trades, Quiver Quantitative, Unusual Whales, NANC, Insider Option — every major way to track Congressional stock trades in 2026, honestly compared.
• The STOCK Act, explained: what it does and why it matters — The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 forced US lawmakers to publicly disclose their stock trades. Here's what it requires, what it doesn't, and what's changed since.
• How to follow Nancy Pelosi's stock trades — Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio is one of the most-watched in the world. Here's exactly how to see every trade, where the data comes from, and what the track record actually looks like.
• What is Congress stock trading, and why does it matter? — Members of the US Congress legally buy and sell stocks — and publicly disclose every trade. Here's how it works, why it's controversial, and what retail investors can do with the data.