The STOCK Act in 2026

What the law says

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 — STOCK Act, for short — requires every member of Congress, their senior staff, and certain executive-branch officials to publicly disclose securities transactions worth more than $1,000. The disclosure has to happen within 45 days of the trade.

Filings are called PTRs: Periodic Transaction Reports. The House Clerk and Senate Office of Public Records each maintain a searchable archive. Catalyst pulls from both feeds every six hours.

What's in a PTR

• Filer name and chamber — the senator or representative who made the trade, plus their committee assignments if you cross-reference public records.
• Transaction date and disclosure date — the gap between these is the "filing delay." Anything over 45 days is technically a violation, though enforcement is weak in practice.
• Asset — the ticker, or in some cases just an asset description. PTRs are notorious for blurry tickers, so we normalize to a clean symbol where possible.
• Transaction type — purchase, sale, exchange, or "partial sale."
• Amount range — not a dollar figure. Just a bucket: $1,001–$15,000, $15,001–$50,000, $50,001–$100,000, and so on. This is the law's largest blind spot.

The loopholes that still exist in 2026

• Amount ranges hide size. A "$100K–$250K" trade could be anything in that window. We always show the range, never a midpoint estimate.
• Spouses and dependents count, but enforcement is uneven. The trades are reported, but you'll see them labeled "filer," "spouse," "dependent," or "joint."
• Tickers get blurred. A surprising number of PTRs disclose only a fund name, not a tradable ticker. Catalyst tags these and excludes them from per-stock stats.
• Fines are low. The standard fine for a late PTR is $200. Some members have paid it more than once.

How to read a PTR usefully

On a per-member basis, look for two things:

• Sector alignment with committee assignments. A Senate Armed Services member with a thick stack of defense-contractor trades is a different signal from someone whose holdings span the S&P 500.
• Filing-delay habits. A member who consistently files at day 44 is telling you something about how seriously they treat the disclosure regime.

Browse our full Congress tracker for live disclosures, or pick a single member to see their full PTR history.