The rule in one paragraph
Members of the House and Senate are allowed to own and trade stocks. Under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, signed in April 2012 and known as the STOCK Act, they must report any purchase, sale or exchange of a stock, bond or similar security worth more than $1,000. The report is due within 30 days of learning about the trade and no later than 45 days after it. The same rule covers trades by a member’s spouse and dependent children, and senior congressional staff.
What a report contains
The report is called a periodic transaction report, or PTR. Each line lists:
- who owned the asset: the member, a spouse, a dependent child, or jointly
- the asset, usually with its ticker
- whether it was a purchase, a sale, a partial sale or an exchange
- the date of the trade and the date the member was notified of it
- the amount, as a range such as $1,001 to $15,000 or $50,001 to $100,000
Exact share counts and prices are not required. That is the biggest difference from the Form 4 that company insiders file, which gives the exact number of shares and the price.
What is not covered
Widely held investment funds, such as mutual funds, do not need a periodic report, though they appear on the member’s annual financial disclosure. Treasury bills and bonds are reported like stocks. The STOCK Act does not ban trading. In July 2026 the House passed the Stop Insider Trading Act (H.R. 7008), 232 to 198, which would bar members, their spouses and dependent children from buying individual stocks while in office. On September 30, 2026, the Senate vote to advance it failed 53 to 47, short of the 60 votes needed. As of late October 2026, no ban is law.
Where the reports are published
House reports are posted by the Clerk of the House, mostly as PDF files. Senate reports are in the Senate’s electronic financial disclosure system. Reports filed on paper are scanned images. WallStPal reads the electronic reports from both chambers and shows the stock trades on the Congress page, with links to every original report.
Late reports
A report filed after the deadline brings a $200 late fee in the House and Senate. The fee is small, and news investigations have found many members filing late. On our pages, a trade reported more than 45 days after it happened is marked “late.” A late report can have an innocent cause, such as a member learning about a spouse’s trade weeks afterward, so the label is a fact about timing, not an accusation.
Examples
The 2020 coronavirus sales. In early 2020, several senators reported stock sales made after closed-door briefings on the coming pandemic. Senator Richard Burr reported that he and his wife sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million of stock in 33 transactions on February 13, 2020, before markets fell sharply. The Justice Department investigated sales by Burr and three other senators. It closed the inquiries into the other three in May 2020 and into Burr in January 2021, without charges. The public knew about the sales only because the STOCK Act required the reports. Note the range: the report never said exactly how much was sold.
A spouse’s trades. Many of the trades on a member’s report are made by a spouse who manages the family’s investments. In the same 2020 episode, Senator Dianne Feinstein said her husband had made the investment decisions behind sales listed on her reports. On WallStPal, the owner column shows whether a trade was the member’s own, a spouse’s, joint or a child’s.
Explain it like I’m 13
Imagine the people who make the rules for your school were also allowed to trade trading cards. Some of them might hear about a new rule before everyone else, like “next month this card gets banned.” That would be unfair if they used it to trade.
So the school says: you can trade, but every time you trade a card worth more than a little bit, you have to write it on a public list within about six weeks. You don’t have to say exactly what you paid, just a rough range. Anyone can read the list and ask questions if something looks odd.
That list is the STOCK Act report.
Questions about this guide? Pal reads it with you and answers in plain English.
WallStPal explains public filings. Nothing here is investment advice. Editorial policy · Corrections