RESEARCHJune 1, 2026 · 6 min read

Everyone Watches What Congress Buys.
The Real Signal Is What They Sell.

Across 30,795 STOCK Act trades, congressional purchases lag the market on average — but high-conviction sells are the single most accurate signal in the dataset: a 64.8% win rate, higher than any buy strategy we track.

The trade nobody screenshots

Congressional buys are a media genre unto themselves — a representative picks up a chip stock and it's a headline by morning. Sells get the opposite treatment: written off as noise. Taxes, rebalancing, tuition, an ethics divestment — there are a dozen boring reasons to sell, so the assumption is that a sale tells you nothing.

We've leaned on that assumption ourselves. In Does Congress Beat the Market? we deliberately excluded sales, calling them liquidity-driven rather than information-driven. On average, across all sales, that's a fair simplification.

But “on average” buries the most interesting thing in the data. Filter for conviction, and the exits start to look a lot smarter than the entrances.

The number

Start with the baseline. Buy every stock Congress bought — all 6,333 purchases — and you'd have trailed the S&P 500 by 1.41% over the following 180 days, with a win rate of just 43%. As a group, Congress is a below-average buyer.

Now flip to the sell side. Isolate high-conviction sells — the ones the conviction model flags on size, speed of disclosure, and relevance — and the picture inverts.

STRATEGYNWR 180D180D ALPHA
High Conviction Sells★ PRIMARY SIGNAL
5764.8%+7.20%
Cross-Chamber Bipartisan Buys
31156.3%+7.88%
High Conviction Purchases
18152.5%+2.52%
All Purchases (Baseline)
6,33343.0%-1.41%
The asymmetry — Congress's best buy signal wins 56% of the time. Its best sell signal wins 65% of the time. The exits are the sharper edge, and they're the half of the data almost everyone ignores.

What “high conviction” and “a win” actually mean

High conviction isn't every sale. It's the subset the conviction score elevates — meaningful position sizes, fast disclosure rather than a 45-day-late filing, and committee or sector relevance. Routine, small, slow-filed sales don't qualify.

A “win” for a sell signal is scored the opposite of a buy: the signal is right when the stock subsequently underperforms the market. A 64.8% win rate means that in roughly two of every three high-conviction sells, the stock went on to lag the S&P 500 over the next six months. They sold before the weakness.

Why a sell might say more than a buy

This is the part we can't prove, only reason about — so treat it as hypothesis, not accusation.

1.
Buying is noisy; selling is deliberate.
You can buy a stock for optimism, on an advisor’s nudge, or because it’s in a fund you barely track. Dumping a sized position quickly is a decision, not a default.
2.
The downside is what you actually know.
Information advantages — a stalling bill, a contract that won’t renew, a sector cooling — often show up first as a reason to leave, not a reason to arrive.
3.
Sells don’t get gamed.
Because nobody’s building “follow the congressional sell” portfolios, the signal hasn’t been arbitraged the way the buy-side headlines have.

None of that implies wrongdoing by any individual. It's a statistical pattern in public filings — but it's a pattern worth watching.

The honest caveats

1.
Small sample.
High-conviction sells are rare by construction: 57 signals (trades dated Feb 2023–Oct 2025). A 64.8% win rate on 57 events is a strong historical hit rate, not a law of nature.
2.
The edge is a 180-day edge.
Like the buy findings, the six-month horizon is where it shows up. Shorter holds capture less of it.
3.
Winsorized.
Alpha is winsorized at ±200% so a single blowup can’t carry the result. Raw numbers run a touch higher and a lot noisier.
4.
Observational.
This is a backtest of public disclosures, not investment advice, and not a claim about anyone’s intent.

The method behind the numbers

Universe30,795 STOCK Act trade disclosures (House + Senate).
SignalSales surfaced by the conviction model (size, disclosure speed, relevance), labeled “High Conviction Sells.”
TimingMeasured from the disclosure date — the point a follower could actually have acted.
BenchmarkS&P 500 over the identical 180-day window; a sell “wins” when the stock underperforms it.
OutliersAlpha winsorized at ±200%.

See every strategy side by side — buys and the lone sell signal — on the Research page, watch new high-conviction sells land in the Signal Log, and rank the members behind them on the Leaderboard.

EXPLORE THE DATA YOURSELF

Watch the Exits, Not Just the Entrances.

High-conviction sell signals, conviction-scored trades, and real-time STOCK Act alerts — updated daily from the official filings.

SIGNAL FEED →ALL STRATEGIES →
Last updated: June 1, 2026. This research is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Backtested performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk of loss. Congressional trade disclosures are public information filed under the STOCK Act. Signal Congress is not affiliated with the U.S. Congress or any government agency.
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