Smart Money / Congress

Congressional stock trades,
decoded.

U.S. House and Senate members disclose their stock trades under the STOCK Act. Gunpowder turns those public disclosures into ranked briefings — who is trading, who is trading in their own oversight sectors, and who files late.

What you get

Significance score (0–100)

Every disclosed trade is scored on size, committee-sector alignment, peer clustering, timing, and the member’s profile — so the consequential trades rise to the top.

Committee-conflict flags

We flag trades by members in sectors the committees they sit on directly oversee — the disclosures most worth a closer read.

Late-filing flags

The STOCK Act sets disclosure deadlines. We surface filings that landed late, with the disclosure lag in days.

Public, official data

Sourced from U.S. House Clerk disclosures and Senate filings — all public record. New to how the disclosure regime works? Read what the STOCK Act requires.

Gunpowder provides this as news and communications-media analysis of public disclosures — it is not trading advice or a recommendation.

In the briefings

  • Most active congressional traders this week
  • Members trading in their committee’s sectors
  • The late filers
  • Per-member portfolio briefings
Browse congressional briefings →

How we score it

Every disclosed trade gets a deterministic Congressional Score from 0–100 — no black box, no opaque AI weighting. The five factors below add up, so the consequential disclosures rise to the top of each briefing.

A high score doesn’t allege wrongdoing. It flags a disclosure worth a closer look — a large position, in a sector the member’s committee directly oversees, clustered with trades by other members in the same name, filed promptly by someone in leadership. Read it as a ranking of where to spend attention, and always weight it against the filing lag, since a trade can surface up to 45 days after the fact.

  • Transaction size up to 30
  • Committee-sector alignment up to 25
  • Peer clustering — other members in the same name up to 15
  • Filing timeliness — the disclosure lag up to 15
  • Member profile — leadership and committee role up to 15

Frequently asked questions

Does a high score mean a trade was improper?

No. The score measures how noteworthy a disclosure is for analysis — size, committee overlap, clustering, timeliness — not its legality. It ranks attention, not wrongdoing.

What counts as a committee conflict?

A trade in a company or sector that a committee the member sits on directly oversees. It lifts the score because of the potential information advantage, but it is not itself a violation.

How current is the data?

Disclosures arrive up to 45 days after a trade under the STOCK Act, and sometimes later. We flag the filing lag so you can weight recency yourself.

Can you track a specific member’s trades?

Yes. Disclosures are filed per member, so the data supports per-member portfolios and histories. The briefings surface the most active and most consequential members each period, and flag who is trading in their own committee’s sectors.