Congress vs the S&P 500: 37 of 49 tracked members trail the index

Updated Sep 16, 2026 · last scoring run

Every stock purchase a tracked member of Congress disclosed is scored here over a fixed 365-day window from the day it was bought, against the S&P 500 over the same window. 11 of 49 members came out ahead on the median purchase, 37 came out behind, and 1 landed exactly level.

These are not returns anyone earned. Disclosures report dollar brackets and no share counts, so every purchase is weighted equally and counted once, and sales are never matched back to purchases. The number below each member is how the stocks behaved after the buy, not what the member made. Full methodology.

The headline numbers

Every ranked member

Ranked by median excess return against the S&P 500. Sample size is the column that decides how much any row is worth: a member with 708 scored purchases is describing a pattern, and a member with nineteen is describing nineteen trades.

On 41 of the 49 rows the median stock column minus the median S&P 500 column does not equal the excess column. That is arithmetic rather than an error. Each column is the median of a different distribution, and the excess figure is the median of every trade's own excess, not the gap between two medians. The middle trade by stock return is rarely the middle trade by excess.

How to read this table

A purchase scores by taking the stock's split- and dividend-adjusted return over the 365 days after the disclosed transaction date, then subtracting what SPY returned over the same days. Because that figure is the gap between two returns rather than a return of its own, it is written in percentage points, abbreviated pp in the table. A trade only scores once that window has closed, which means purchases from the last twelve months are excluded from this page by construction, not by choice.

Members are ranked on the median of their own purchases rather than the average, because one position that multiplies can carry an average on its own while saying nothing about how the other purchases went. The median stock and median S&P columns are published beside the excess figure so the difference can be checked rather than taken on trust. They are medians of separate distributions, so the two will not always subtract cleanly to the excess column.

The beat rate is the share of a member's scored purchases that finished ahead of the index. A member who beats the index on more than half their scored purchases will have a positive median excess return, because the purchases are weighted equally and the median is the middle observation. With an even number of purchases and exactly half beating the index, the median can be positive, negative or zero. Loss size moves the average, not the median, which is why the average is not published here.

One asymmetry is worth stating plainly. SPY is always measured across the full 365 days from the transaction date. If a stock stops trading inside its window, through a buyout, a bankruptcy or a delisting, the position is carried to its last traded close rather than discarded, which means that trade is scored over a shorter stock window than the benchmark window it is compared against. Dropping those trades instead would be survivorship bias, because a delisting is usually a bad outcome. No purchase currently on this page used that carry, so every row here does compare identical windows.

The carry uses the last traded close as the exit and nothing else. Cash taken in an acquisition, any recovery paid out of a bankruptcy, and shares received in a stock-for-stock deal are not tracked or added back. A purchase that ends in a takeover at a premium is therefore scored at the last market price rather than the deal proceeds, and a successor holding is not followed.

What this page does not show

It is not a portfolio, a return, or a ranking of investing skill. Filings disclose a bracket such as $1,001 to $15,000 and never a share count, so position sizes are unknowable and every purchase here counts the same. Sales are recorded in the underlying data but are never matched back to a purchase, so a member who sold a falling stock in week three still carries the full 365-day loss in this table.

Filings also cover a spouse and dependent children without saying who directed the trade. 20.5% of the purchases scored here are attributed to a spouse or dependent, and several members on this page disclose only spouse activity. Many members hold stock through managed accounts and blind arrangements they do not control. Nothing on this page is evidence of wrongdoing, and nothing on it is investment advice.

49 of 66 members considered are ranked here. A member needs 10 scored purchases to appear, and at least 70% of their purchases must resolve to usable price history. Mark Green cleared the first floor and missed the second, and is named here rather than dropped without a word. This is a tracked subset of Congress, not all 535 members, so no figure here is a statement about the institution as a whole.

Common questions

Do members of Congress beat the stock market?

Mostly not, on this measure. Of the 49 tracked members with enough scored purchases to rank, 11 had a median purchase that beat the S&P 500 over the following 12 months, 37 had one that trailed it, and 1 landed exactly level. The median member trailed the index by 6.5 percentage points. Across all 5,208 scored purchases, 39.9% beat the index.

How is each trade scored?

Every disclosed stock purchase is measured over a fixed 365-day window starting on the transaction date, against SPY over the same window, using split- and dividend-adjusted prices. A purchase is only scored once its window has closed, so trades from the last 12 months are excluded by construction. Eligibility runs on the transaction date, not the disclosure date: purchases transacted within a rolling 5 years qualify, however late the filing arrived. Full method: /capitol/methodology.

Are these the returns members of Congress actually earned?

No, and they cannot be. Disclosure filings report dollar brackets rather than exact amounts and give no share counts, so every purchase here is weighted equally and counted once, regardless of size. Sales are not matched back to purchases, so nothing here tracks when a position was closed. This measures how the stocks behaved after they were bought, not what anyone made.

Whose trades are these?

Filings cover a member, their spouse, and dependent children, and the filing does not say who made the decision. 20.5% of the scored purchases here are attributed to a spouse or dependent rather than the member. Several members on this page disclose only spouse activity. Members also commonly hold stock through managed accounts they do not direct.

Why are some members missing?

A member appears only after 10 of their purchases score, and only if at least 70% of their purchases could be priced. 49 of 66 members considered are published. Mark Green cleared the purchase floor but fell below the coverage floor and is named here rather than dropped silently. This is a tracked subset of Congress, not all 535 members.

Scored from STOCK Act disclosures against SPY. Prices from Yahoo Finance, split- and dividend-adjusted. See also the Congress tracker and the trading statistics page.