The 118th Congress traded more than $1 billion in 2023, with a third of trading members beating the fund that tracks S&P 500 growth — demonstrating once again that if you’re privy to the insider information that’s readily available to the nation’s primary legislative body, it’s not hard to beat the market.
Financial data platform Unusual Whales released a report detailing the stock purchasing and selling activity of the more than 100 members who disclosed their stock trading decisions.
Legislators have tried and failed several times to ban their peers from trading stocks, a stipulation that 86 percent of U.S. voters support. The lucrative lure of bullish and bearish ebb and flow, however, has proven too great for Congress to cut it off.
Such was the case in 2023 which, for Congress, was marked by selling more than buying.
Members technically traded less in 2023 than they did in the past few years, with close to 11,000 transactions. The number of elected members of Congress trading also declined last year, to 115.
Unusual Whales concluded that lagging participation from serial congressional traders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who infamously profits millions from her and her husband’s shares, was likely a campaign strategy since voters “vigorously” keep an eye on members and their trading activity.
“A general rule I’ve found is that if they’re up for re-election in 2024, then they’ve severely decreased and/or stopped their trading activity in the last year,” the report states.
Even though
