---
title: "Congressional stock trading and the STOCK Act: how the disclosures work"
description: "Who in Congress reports stock trades, the 30-day and 45-day deadlines, the $1,000 threshold, the value ranges, where reports are published, and what they omit."
canonical: https://insideralpha.ai/learn/congressional-stock-trading-stock-act
date_published: 2026-10-12
date_updated: 2026-10-12
publisher: InsiderAlpha (https://insideralpha.ai)
---

Canonical URL: https://insideralpha.ai/learn/congressional-stock-trading-stock-act
Published 2026-10-12. Updated 2026-10-12.

# Congressional stock trading and the STOCK Act: how the disclosures work

Members of the U.S. Congress are allowed to own and trade individual stocks. What they cannot do is trade on nonpublic information they learn in office, and what they must do is report their trades. The reporting rule comes from the **STOCK Act** of 2012, and the report it created is the **Periodic Transaction Report**, or PTR. This guide explains who files a PTR, what has to be in it, when it is due, where it is published, and what it leaves out. For a field-by-field walk through a real filing, read [how to read a PTR](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/how-to-read-a-periodic-transaction-report); to see current House disclosures, open the [Congress trades page](https://insideralpha.ai/congress-trades).

## What the STOCK Act did

The [Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-112publ105/html/PLAW-112publ105.htm) (Public Law 112-105) was signed on April 4, 2012. Members of Congress had already filed annual financial disclosure reports under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 for decades; the STOCK Act amended that act in three ways that matter here.

- **Section 4** states that "Members of Congress and employees of Congress are not exempt from the insider trading prohibitions arising under the securities laws".
- **Section 6** added the periodic transaction report: a filing due "not later than 30 days after receiving notification of any transaction ... but in no case later than 45 days after such transaction". Before 2012, a trade made in January could stay private until the annual report due the following May 15.
- **Section 8** required the House and Senate to post the forms on their official websites within 30 days of filing, in databases the public can "search, sort, and download".

Two later laws changed the text without changing the rule for members. [Public Law 113-7](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-113publ7/html/PLAW-113publ7.htm) (April 15, 2013) withdrew the online posting requirement for most congressional staff and executive branch employees, while keeping it for members of Congress, candidates, the President, the Vice President and Senate-confirmed senior officials. Then Public Law 117-286 (December 27, 2022) moved the Ethics in Government Act into Title 5 of the U.S. Code, so the periodic transaction rule is now [5 U.S.C. 13105(l)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/13105). Older guidance cites it as section 103(l) of the Act; same text.

## Who has to file

The House Committee on Ethics' [PTR form and instructions](https://ethics.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Final-CY-2025-PTR-Form-1.pdf) put it plainly: "Members, Officers, and Employees who qualify as 'senior staff' under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 are required to file Periodic Transaction Reports." The statute applies to both chambers, so Senators and senior Senate staff file as well.

- **The member reports family trades too.** The form covers securities "owned by you, your spouse, or dependent children". A spouse's trade in a spouse's account appears on the member's PTR, usually marked SP.
- **Senior staff file as well.** Employees paid at or above the "senior staff rate" set by statute file PTRs. Candidates for the House do not; principal assistants and shared employees do not unless they are paid at that rate ([CY2024 Instruction Guide](https://ethics.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Final-Instruction-Guide-2024.pdf)).
- **InsiderAlpha covers members.** Our pages show the trades disclosed by members of the House. Staff filings are public on the Clerk's site but are not part of the tracker.

## What counts as a reportable transaction

The statute ([5 U.S.C. 13104(a)(5)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/13104)) reaches any purchase, sale or exchange "exceeding $1,000" in stocks, bonds, commodities futures and other securities, and in real property other than a personal residence. The House form narrows that for PTR purposes and spells out the edges:

- The $1,000 test is the **gross amount** of a single transaction, "not your gain or loss made on the sale". A $5,000 sale of something bought for $7,000 is reportable even though it lost money.
- Trades inside **self-directed retirement accounts** such as a 401(k) or IRA count, and so does rebalancing between holdings inside them.
- **Reinvested dividends** count when a single reinvestment exceeds $1,000.
- "Other securities" includes **cryptocurrencies**, which the form names as an example.

The exclusions matter as much as the rule. The form excludes transactions in a **widely held investment fund** that the filer does not control and that is publicly traded or widely diversified, the carve-out the STOCK Act's own [section 14](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-112publ105/html/PLAW-112publ105.htm) wrote for mutual funds and similar vehicles. The House form also lists: any transaction in a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund, real property, transactions solely between the filer, spouse and dependent children, the federal Thrift Savings Plan, stock splits, bequests and inheritances, bank and money-market accounts, certificates of deposit, and rollovers between retirement accounts. Assets in a qualified blind trust or an excepted trust are also outside the PTR requirement. Many of these still appear on the annual Financial Disclosure report; they simply do not trigger a 45-day filing.

## The deadline: 30 days from notice, 45 days at most

The rule in [5 U.S.C. 13105(l)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/13105) has two clocks. A report is due "not later than 30 days after receiving notification" of the transaction, "but in no case later than 45 days after such transaction". The House Committee on Ethics states it as the earlier of two dates: ["30 days from being made aware of the transaction; or 45 days from the transaction date"](https://ethics.house.gov/financial-disclosure/). The notification clock exists because a broker, a money manager or a spouse may execute a trade the member only hears about later; the 45-day cap exists so that delay cannot run forever. There are no extensions for PTRs, and a deadline that falls on a weekend or federal holiday is not pushed to the next business day. The [disclosure delays guide](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/congressional-trade-disclosure-delays) works through the Committee's own dated examples.

## Ranges, not amounts

A PTR never states a dollar figure. It states a **category of value**, and the categories come from [5 U.S.C. 13104(d)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/13104). On the House form they read: $1,001 to $15,000; $15,001 to $50,000; $50,001 to $100,000; $100,001 to $250,000; $250,001 to $500,000; $500,001 to $1,000,000; $1,000,001 to $5,000,000; $5,000,001 to $25,000,000; $25,000,001 to $50,000,000; and over $50,000,000. One further column, "Transaction in a Spouse or Dependent Child Asset over $1,000,000", is reserved for assets the member has no interest in. The category is chosen on the gross purchase or sale price; "the amount of any capital gain or loss on the transaction is irrelevant".

A trade marked $1,001 to $15,000 could be $1,100 or $14,900, and a sum of several ranged trades is itself a range. InsiderAlpha keeps every amount as the band the member filed and shows totals as a range, never as a midpoint or an estimate.

## Where the reports are published

House PTRs are filed with the Clerk of the House, not with the Ethics Committee, either through the electronic system at fd.house.gov or on paper delivered to the Legislative Resource Center. The Clerk publishes them on its [Financial Disclosure Reports](https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/FinancialDisclosure) site, where each filing is a PDF with a numeric filing ID, and offers a yearly index for download. No attachments are permitted with an electronic filing, so the PDF is the whole record. Senate reports are published separately through the Senate's electronic financial disclosure system at [efdsearch.senate.gov](https://efdsearch.senate.gov/search/).

## Late filings and the $200 fee

Under [5 U.S.C. 13106(d)](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/5/13106), anyone who files a required report more than 30 days after it was due "shall ... pay a filing fee of $200", which the supervising ethics office "may waive ... in extraordinary circumstances". The House Committee's guide adds that the fee is not assessed until the 31st day after the due date, that every late PTR carries a minimum fee of $200, and that repeated late filings can cost more. It is a filing fee, not a trading penalty: the report is still accepted and still published. Separately, the same section allows a civil penalty of up to $50,000 for knowingly and willfully falsifying or failing to file, and the form warns filers that 18 U.S.C. 1001 applies to false statements. InsiderAlpha flags a trade disclosed more than 45 days after it happened as late.

## What a PTR does not disclose

Read a PTR for what it is: a notice that a reportable transaction occurred. It does not give the exact dollar amount, the number of shares, or the price. It does not say why the trade was made, who decided to make it, or whether an adviser made it under a standing mandate. It does not carry the Rule 10b5-1 plan checkbox that a corporate insider's [Form 4](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/sec-form-4) carries. It says nothing about what else the member owns; that is the annual report's job. Treat the ticker, the direction, the dates and the range as the whole of the evidence, and read the [comparison with corporate insider filings](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/congress-trades-vs-insider-trades) before treating one like the other.

## What InsiderAlpha covers

The [Congress trades page](https://insideralpha.ai/congress-trades) lists House PTRs from 2024 onward, read from the Clerk's published filings. Electronic filings are parsed line by line; paper filings, which the Clerk publishes as scans without a text layer, are listed with a link to the scan rather than guessed at. Every trade links to the official PDF. Senate reports are not covered yet, because the Senate's disclosure site refuses automated clients and we do not work around that; each page says which chamber it covers. Members can open the [Congress tracker](https://insideralpha.ai/congress-tracker) for the full history, filters by member, ticker, party, state and owner, and the Form 4 open-market purchases by corporate insiders in the same companies.

[Read a PTR field by field →](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/how-to-read-a-periodic-transaction-report) · [Why the disclosures arrive late →](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/congressional-trade-disclosure-delays) · [What corporate insiders file instead →](https://insideralpha.ai/learn/sec-form-4)

*This article is informational and is not investment advice.*