Congress' Insider Trading Game: Who's Making Bank While Making Laws?

The plot thickens. While the S&P 500 climbed 2.93% in January and the Nasdaq gained 1.8%, members of Congress were busy moving millions in and out of stocks—and yes, the public is losing patience.

Here’s the thing: back in 2022, Congress collectively outperformed the S&P 500 by 17.5%. Coincidence? A bipartisan crew including Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Fitzpatrick thinks not. They’ve reintroduced the Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act to ban individual stock trading by federal lawmakers. Over 80% of Americans across the political spectrum support it.

Who’s actually trading?

Only 5% of Congress doesn’t own stocks. The real action? These five dominated 2024:

• Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ): 526 trades, $91M volume
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): 17 trades, $37.75M volume
• Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL): 69 trades, $5.99M volume
• Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL): 202 trades, $5.53M volume
• Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK): 71 trades, $4.41M volume

January 2025 plays:

Gottheimer (net worth $50.42M) went all-in on financials—Goldman Sachs, Block Inc.—betting on Trump’s deregulation push. He also grabbed Apple and Microsoft calls, plus Walmart shares for the inflation play.

Pelosi ($272.5M net worth) stuck to her tech playbook. She bought call options on Amazon, Alphabet, Nvidia, and Tempus AI. That Tempus position? Already up 92.05%.

Mullin has been the January beast, dropping $1.16M in trades across 10 stocks including Applied Industrial Technologies, Dell, and Stride (up 27.99% since purchase).

The catch:

The STOCK Act forces disclosure within 45 days for trades over $1,000. That transparency is the only thing stopping them. Whether full bans happen? Unknown. But when members with $50M+ net worths are timing the market this perfectly, the optics—and ethics—get spicy.

One thing’s clear: insider access hits different.