Whether you like it or not, members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell securities. True, federal law prohibits them from using "nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit," and they're required to disclose their trades.
That said, it's understandable if folks don't quite trust politicians to be on the up and up when their personal fortunes might appear to be in tension with their duties as elected representatives. Perhaps this is unfair; even cynical. But to modify a famous quote from Upton Sinclair, it's difficult to get a person to understand something when that person's salary depends upon the person not understanding it.
Disclosure rules are supposed to help mitigate this problem. Thanks to these requirements, the public can follow what members of the House and Senate are doing with their investments.
Before we go further, please note that this activity shouldn't be used for trading purposes. After all, insider buying and selling at publicly traded companies is voluminously disclosed and analyzed, but it doesn't really tell us much. That's because insiders – the executives and board members who know what's going on – can sell for any number of legitimate reasons, from paying tuition to portfolio diversification.
When it comes to stocks, insider buying is actually a more useful piece of information. And even then, it's not exactly a screaming buy signal. Using insider activity among members of Congress as the basis for some kind of trading system is not a rigorous idea.
With those caveats out of the way, it is indeed interesting to see which stocks, bonds and private investments are most popular with members of the House and Senate. Perhaps more interesting is how certain pols churn their portfolios, which is to be avoided if you're a retail investor.
Have a look at the below table to see which politicians were the most active traders by volume over the past three months, according to data from Capitol Trades.
