Do Members of Congress Beat the Market?

When people ask whether Washington traders have an edge, they usually mean members of Congress—House representatives and senators filing PTR disclosures—not every public official nationwide. So do members of Congress beat the market on their disclosed stock purchases?

The short answer

Some do; most of the ranked field is split. In our latest 10-year return rankings (members with at least five priced stock buys), among the top 50 performers:

• 31 beat matched S&P 500 purchases on the same dates (beatSpyMultiplier above 1.0).
• 17 did not beat that matched benchmark.
• 48 of those 50 are current or former House or Senate members—the rest of the leaderboard is still congressional stock disclosure data.

Congress does not move as one bloc. A minority of active traders has clearly outperformed; others lagged the matched index line.

House vs Senate

Outperformance is not evenly split across chambers in this sample:

Chamber	In top-50 ranked	Beat matched S&P 500
House	42	29
Senate	6	2

The Senate sample is smaller because fewer senators meet the minimum priced-trade threshold in our model—not because Senate returns are universally worse. When senators do rank, they can still show large edges (for example, Ron Wyden at roughly 2.2× matched SPY on disclosed buys).

Names to know

Leaders among congressional members in the current data include:

• Brenda Lawrence (D-House) — about +1,187% on disclosed purchases, 4.0× vs matched SPY.
• Roger Marshall (R-House) — about +977%, 3.4× benchmark.
• Rubén Hinojosa (D-House) — about +946%, 2.7× benchmark.
• Ron Wyden (D-Senate) — about +468%, 2.2× benchmark.

See the full best performing politicians leaderboard or the filtered politicians beating the market list for updated names.

How we measure “beating the market”

We compare disclosed stock purchases to matched S&P 500 buys on the same dates and amount weights—not a single SPY buy-and-hold line. That answers: did this member’s reported buys do better than indexing each purchase into the S&P 500 when they traded?

Filings use amount ranges, trades can be reported late, and not every asset is a listed stock. This is a transparency dataset, not a audited brokerage statement.

Track this on Politician Stock Tracker

Browse chamber, party, and return filters on Politician Stock Tracker. The best performing politicians page ranks congressional members by disclosed purchase returns; individual member pages break down trades, timing, and holdings.

Disclaimer

Data from public House PTR, Senate periodic transaction, and related STOCK Act filings. Return figures are estimates for educational use only—not investment advice.