How Many Members of Congress Trade Stocks?

2026 so far, by chamber

A member of Congress who buys or sells a stock, bond or other security worth more than $1,000 has to file a periodic transaction report within 45 days. A member who files none in a year reported no such trade that year. The table counts the people behind the reports filed in 2026, with each member counted once however many reports they filed. Trades in a spouse’s or dependent child’s account go on the member’s report and count for the member.

The year is not over, and a trade made today can be reported up to 45 days from now, so the 2026 count will still rise. How the two chambers compare on volume, speed of reporting and what the purchases did afterward is in does the House or the Senate trade more stocks, and the same count state by state is in which states’ members of Congress trade the most stocks.

Stocks, or any security?

A periodic transaction report covers more than stocks: corporate and municipal bonds, Treasuries, options, private funds and partnership interests are reported on the same form. Coldpine attaches a ticker symbol where the asset is a listed stock or fund. On that narrower reading, 112 members of Congress (91 in the House, 21 in the Senate) reported at least one ticker-listed stock or fund in 2026, equal to 20.9% of the 535 voting seats. The other 27 reported only assets without a ticker. Which symbols come up most is in the most traded stocks in Congress.

The House, year by year

Coldpine’s House record starts with reports filed on January 1, 2023, which gives 3 full calendar years and the current one. Reports are counted by the year they were filed. The last column counts only members with a report filed by October 29 of each year, so the current year can be read against the same stretch of earlier ones.

Across the whole record, 192 different House members have reported at least one transaction. 43 filed in all 4 calendar years and 78 appear in just one. 24 of the 109 House members with a report in 2026 had none on record in an earlier year. The membership of the House changed over the period, so 192 is a count of people who served at some point since 2023 and is not a share of 435 seats.

How often they trade

Reporting a transaction and trading often are different things. Of the 139 members with a report in 2026, 24 listed exactly one transaction and 62 listed 10 or more; the median member listed 8. A small group accounts for most of the volume, as set out in the most active stock traders in Congress.

Whose account

A report marks each transaction with its owner. 56 of the 139 members who reported in 2026 listed every transaction in a spouse’s, a dependent child’s or a joint account, with none marked as the member’s own or left unmarked. The split across all transactions is in whose trades are they.

What this does and does not show

These are counts of members who reported a trade, which is narrower than members who own stocks. A member who holds shares all year and neither buys nor sells files no periodic transaction report and is not counted here; holdings appear on the annual financial disclosure, which Coldpine does not parse. Widely held investment funds, such as diversified mutual funds, are exempt from these reports, and so are trades made inside a qualified blind trust. A member who traded and did not report it would be missing as well, and late reports move a trade into the year it was filed. Reporting a trade is what the law requires, and none of these counts is evidence of wrongdoing by any member.

Methodology and honest caveats

The figures cover periodic transaction reports filed from January 1, 2023 through October 29, 2026. Coldpine’s House record goes back to January 2023 and its Senate record begins with reports filed on January 6, 2026, so year-by-year counts are given for the House only. A member is counted in a year when at least one transaction appears on a report filed that year, whenever the trade itself took place. Members are counted per person, and a member who appears under two spellings is counted once. Seat shares use 435 voting House seats and 100 Senate seats. The House count includes non-voting delegates who file with the House, and a seat that changed hands during a year can add a second filer, so the shares are a guide to scale and not an exact proportion of sitting members. A ticker-listed stock or fund is a transaction Coldpine matched to a ticker symbol. Family-account transactions are those marked spouse, dependent child or joint. How we parse filings is set out in our methodology. Figures are computed live and update as new filings arrive, so they may differ from the ones quoted the day this was published.