What Stocks Are Politicians Buying and Selling?
Some of the trades made by members of the House and Senate might surprise you.
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.
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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.
Stocks politicians are buying and selling
Congress member | 90-day trading volume | Major buys | Major sells |
---|---|---|---|
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas | 28.8 million shares | Aramark (ARMK), Howmet Aerospace (HWM), GE Vernova (GEV) | Alphabet (GOOGL), Sun Communities (SUI), American International Group (AIG) |
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. | 15 million shares | None | U.S. Treasury bills |
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va. | 15 million shares | None | Garden of Eden LLC |
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. | 12.4 million shares | Barclays (BCS), BNP Paribas (BNPQY), Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM) | Pepsico (PEP), Starbucks (SBUX), Chipotle Mexican Grill (CMG) |
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. | 4.5 million shares | None | Port of Seattle, Washington; South Carolina State Ports Authority; San Antonio, Texas, Electricity & Gas |
Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif. | 3.5 million shares | Foothill-De Anza Community College District; California State University; Lynett Capital Partners II venture fund | U.S. Treasury bills; San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit; Cerritos Community College District, Los Angeles County, Calif. |
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. | 3 million shares | None | euNetworks Group |
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Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.
A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.
Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.
In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.
Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.
Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.
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