Congressional stock trading remains a contentious issue. Members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate regulate the very industries they invest in. In addition, as high-level public officials, they are privy to information that the general public is not.
Unsurprisingly, this set of factors tends to provide U.S. politicians with an average rate of return that far exceeds that of their constituents.
Efforts to curtail the practice have borne little in the way of results thus far. With that in mind, plenty of investors and traders have turned to copying the investments their representatives make, in a bid to replicate some of their successes.
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Receive Signals on US Congress Members' Stock Trades
Stay up-to-date on the trading activity of US Congress members. The signal triggers based on updates from the House disclosure reports, notifying you of their latest stock transactions.
Back in November of 2024, Finbold’s congressional trading radar picked up a particularly suspicious trade — a $1,001 to $15,000 purchase of Viasat (NASDAQ: VSAT) stock. A periodic transaction report revealed that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida’s 25th congressional district had bought VSAT stock on October 23.
Wasserman Schultz’s suspicious trade raises ethical concerns
At the time of Wasserman Schultz’s purchase, Viasat stock was trading at a price of $10.29 — by press time, the price of a VSAT share had rallied by 12.34% up to $11.56. A majority of those gains came on January 23 — when the stock surged by 7.29% and subsequently saw another 2.99% increase in price in the after-hours trading session, bringing the stock’s total gains over the past 5 days up to 47.76%.
Here’s what makes this a suspicious trade — the Representative is a sitting member of the House Committee on Appropriations, as well as the House Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies.
That surge on January 23 came about because Viasat was one of the four companies selected by NASA for its $4.8 billion satellite contract. It remains an open question whether or not the Congresswoman leveraged non-public information to make a timely trade — as her committee assignments certainly provide her with an overview of public spending and military-adjacent projects that constitute an informational edge.
Finbold market analyst Andreja Stojanovic forecasted that this stock would make a decisive move to the upside on account of the contract in late December.
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Stay up-to-date on the trading activity of US Senators. The signal triggers based on updates from the Senate disclosure reports, notifying you of their latest stock transactions.
In addition, this isn’t the only suspicious trade that Wasserman Schultz has made. The former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, who had to resign due to allegations of bias against former presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, invested in a little-known mining stock in August — only for it to see a 29% surge in short-order. The representative is also a member of the Subcommittee on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals.
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