Does Congress Actually Beat the Stock Market?
No, not on average. As of October 30, 2026, the 12,575 stock purchases members of Congress have disclosed that can be priced over a full 90 days moved +4.01% on average in the 90 days after the trade, against +5.19% for the S&P 500 over the same windows, which leaves them 1.18 points behind the index. 43.0% of those purchases did better than the S&P 500. Counting each member once instead of each trade, 33 of the 71 members with at least five priced purchases came out ahead of the index on average, and the median member finished 0.19 points behind it.
Key numbers
- As of October 30, 2026, the 12,575 stock purchases disclosed by members of Congress that can be priced over a full 90 days moved +4.01% on average in the 90 days after the trade, against +5.19% for the S&P 500 over the same windows.
- 43.0% of the stock purchases disclosed by members of Congress (5,411 of 12,575) did better than the S&P 500 over the following 90 days, as of October 30, 2026.
- 33 of the 71 members of Congress with at least five priced stock purchases beat the S&P 500 on average over 90 days, as of October 30, 2026, and the median member finished 0.19 points behind the index.
- Among the 39 members of Congress with at least 20 priced stock purchases, 18 beat the S&P 500 on average over 90 days, as of October 30, 2026.
- Without the largest filer in Congress (Rohit Khanna, 7,497 of the 12,575 priced purchases), the remaining 5,078 disclosed purchases moved +5.38% on average over 90 days, against +5.93% for the S&P 500 over the same windows, as of October 30, 2026.
- These figures cover congressional stock purchases made between November 29, 2022 and July 30, 2026. Later purchases had not completed a 90-day window as of October 30, 2026.
It is one of the most common assumptions in finance: that members of Congress, with their committee access and front-row view of policy, must be unusually good stock pickers. Measured purchase by purchase, the record is closer to ordinary. The typical member lands near the index, the same place most active traders land. Some members do finish well ahead of it, and some finish well behind.
Why the “Congress beats the market” story sticks
A handful of well-timed, well-publicized trades, a chair of the right committee buying a defense contractor before a budget vote, get enormous attention, and survivorship does the rest: the winners are memorable and the losers are not. But an average is built from every trade, not the screenshots. Most disclosed purchases are unremarkable, and plenty of members trade actively while doing no better than an index fund. Trading often is not the same as trading well.
How this is measured
For each disclosed purchase, Coldpine takes the stock’s return over the next 90 days and subtracts the S&P 500’s return over the same window. Averaged across a member’s purchases, that difference is their alpha. We include members with at least 5 priced purchases that have a full 90-day window. It is a point-in-time measure of disclosed buys, not realized profit-and-loss or current holdings. See the full methodology. For the same measure split by party, see do Democrats or Republicans trade stocks better.
The exceptions are the interesting part
A few members do clear the bar convincingly. John Fetterman currently leads, with disclosed purchases beating the S&P by an average of +25.5% over 90 days across 7 priced purchases. The question worth your attention is not “does Congress beat the market” in the aggregate, it’s which members do, and whether they keep doing it. That is what the ranking is for, see the full list of members who beat the market and the live leaderboard.
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Coldpine is a publisher of intelligence on public Congressional disclosures. Alpha is a point-in-time measure of disclosed purchases vs the S&P 500, not realized profit-and-loss, current holdings, or a prediction of future returns. This is informational only, not investment advice, and not a suggestion to buy, sell, or copy anyone’s trades.