Copy-trade rankings: All members of Congress

Among 121 politicians with enough history, 34 would have beaten the S&P 500 on the days they held stocks, copying their disclosed trades three days after filing, and 87 would not. The median gap was -2.9 percentage points a year.

How to read this table

• Each politician gets the same experiment: $10,000 invested when their first purchase in this dataset became public, copying every stock or fund purchase and sale three calendar days after filing, with no leverage or shorting.
• The copy portfolio is often mostly cash (few holdings, each a small slice), which would unfairly drag it below the index. So the table compares the return of the copied holdings with SPY on the same days, and shows how much of the money was invested on average.
• Only people with at least 20 executed copy trades, about a year of days holding stocks, and price history for most of their trades are ranked. Others are listed on their own page with the reason.
• Survivorship bias: stocks that were delisted, renamed or acquired have no price history, so those copy trades are rejected. That tends to flatter results.
• Disclosed amounts are ranges, the data has gaps (see the methodology), and one lucky position can drive a result. This is not investment advice.