CopyGov research guide
How to track Congress stock trades from public disclosures
A practical workflow for finding congressional stock disclosures, checking ownership and dates, and comparing post-publication results.
Start with the filing
A social post is a lead, not the underlying evidence. Open the original disclosure and identify the filer, reported owner, security, transaction type, transaction date, and filing date. The House Clerk provides a public financial-disclosure search; the Senate maintains a separate system.
CopyGov links its displayed research to source documents. Its historical study includes House and Senate records; the current filing workflow covers House disclosures. Coverage of one source should not be assumed to mean complete coverage of Congress.
Separate purchases from other events
A sale, an option exercise, a gift, and a direct stock purchase answer different questions. Do not combine them into a single “bought this stock” claim. The purchase research in CopyGov focuses on stock-buy signals; an options-related underlying-stock comparison is not an option return.
Read the ownership field as carefully as the ticker. A transaction disclosed for a spouse or dependent should retain that attribution in any summary. A disclosure does not reveal the complete reasoning behind an investment.
Use the date a reader could have acted
Keep the transaction date separate from the date the filing became public. A price chart beginning on the earlier transaction date can describe what happened to the filer’s investment, but it cannot establish what a reader could have earned after seeing the disclosure.
CopyGov’s signal research uses a modeled entry after the recorded publication date and compares the stock with SPY over matching dates. Inspect the displayed entry and end dates, rather than treating a label such as “six months” as an exact calendar interval.
Make the workflow repeatable
Choose a small set of people or companies. Revisit their records, read amendments, and examine unsuccessful outcomes as well as successful ones. Keep unknown prices and incomplete observations visible.
Start with the public profiles below, then use the interactive screener to inspect individual records. CopyGov is a research tool; its current beta does not execute trades or provide always-on external alerts.