Does copying Congress beat SPY, and does entry timing matter?

Do congressional stock purchases beat SPY?

Each entry is held for 252 market sessions from its own start, so the exit dates differ. Both arms contain the same 7,998 matched purchases across 83 politicians. This fixed-horizon cohort is separate from the 8,385-purchase common-exit timing cohort below. The chart shows average stock price return minus SPY over each arm’s exact dates, in percentage points.

Dots mark the estimated averages; lines show descriptive 95% politician-cluster bootstrap intervals. The dashed zero line means matching SPY. Every interval crosses zero, leaving both underperformance and outperformance compatible with the estimates. These event averages establish no reliable market-beating edge in this sample and do not prove that every congressional copy strategy underperforms.

Weighting matters: one vote per politician changes the transaction-date estimate to +3.16 points and the public-entry estimate to −0.81 points. Ro Khanna accounts for 47.6% of purchases in this fixed-horizon cohort.

Quiver’s quoted claim uses different portfolio rules and an earlier period. This comparison neither validates nor refutes its stated historical return. Returns here exclude dividends, fees and taxes and measure event averages rather than a funded portfolio.

The promise behind copying Congress

In a November 15, 2023 update, Quiver Quantitative said its Congress Buys strategy had “continued to consistently outperform the market.” The strategy tracks congressional purchases, weights them by reported size and rebalances weekly.

That is the attraction of copying politicians. But by the time a filing is public, the purchase may be weeks old. Is the useful information in which stock they bought, or in when they bought it? We tested two questions: do the purchases beat SPY, and does buying before disclosure improve the result?

Two questions. Two findings.

Stock selection: no reliable market-beating edge established in this sample. The average purchase lagged SPY by 2.92 percentage points at the transaction-date entry and 2.56 points after disclosure. Both 95% uncertainty intervals cross zero. Equal weighting by politician changes the estimates, with intervals still spanning zero.

Entry timing: no clear average benefit from buying earlier. With a shared exit, the early-minus-public excess-return gap averaged −0.27 points, with a 95% interval of −0.86 to +0.20 points. This paired timing difference answers a separate question from performance against SPY.

Same stocks. Two entry dates. One exit.

Buying on the reported transaction date produced an average timing gap of −0.27 percentage points relative to buying after disclosure, after subtracting SPY over each entry’s actual investment interval. The member-cluster 95% interval was −0.86 to +0.20 points. This sample does not establish a clear average timing advantage.

The comparison contains 8,385 matched common-stock and ADR purchases across 86 politicians. Both entries share an exit 252 market sessions after the earlier entry. The earlier arm uses the transaction-date close; the public arm uses the first close after the filing’s New York calendar date.

Giving each politician equal weight changes the mean gap to −0.03 points, with an interval of −1.88 to +1.63 points. Ro Khanna accounts for about 46.9% of the trade-weighted annual sample, so the weighting choice matters.

Does a longer disclosure delay change the result?

The annual sample is split into six groups by calendar days between transaction and filing. All six descriptive member-cluster intervals span zero. The group means do not show a consistent penalty from waiting longer. These groups contain different purchases and politicians; this is an association, not a causal estimate of delay.

Every politician: the annual breakdown

Search a name or sort a column in the table. Positive timing gaps favor earlier entry; negative gaps favor public entry. Small samples remain visible, with their purchase and stock counts, rather than being presented as established skill.

Nancy Pelosi has two qualifying annual purchases in one stock after option-related acquisitions and exercises are excluded. That row is retained in the full table and omitted from the poster’s 20-purchase minimum. The study measures hypothetical stock price returns, including spouse and household transactions attributed to a member; it does not measure household account profits.

Shorter horizons use different matured cohorts

The same common-exit method is repeated at 21, 63 and 126 market sessions. Purchases only qualify when the public entry occurs before that shared exit. A long disclosure delay can therefore exclude a purchase from a short-horizon comparison. The rows below are different cohorts, not the evolution of one portfolio.

How the study was measured

Check the sensitivity and reproduce the figures

Using first-reported versions changes the annual mean timing gap to −0.28 points. Moving the earlier entry to the following session changes it to −0.34 points. The study JSON includes the full paired fixed-horizon comparison, common-exit results, equal-member weighting, month-cluster intervals and exclusions.

The independent audit checked all 44,539 fixed-horizon rows and 39,172 common-exit rows against frozen raw price endpoints, benchmark ratios, date boundaries and group summaries. Query hashes, source receipts and executable analysis are retained with the research project. The downloads contain derived observations and results; no credentials or private account data are included.

Inspect a disclosure at its source

A timing estimate starts with a dated filing and a correctly identified security. Browse the original reports or inspect how NexusTrade turns congressional disclosures into research inputs before interpreting a member’s result.

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