Big Tech Is the Only Thing Congress Agrees On
We ranked a year of congressional stock trades by how many different members touched each name. The same five mega-caps dominate both the buying and the selling.
Over the past twelve months, members of Congress disclosed 2,495 stock purchases across 789 different companies — and 2,637 sales across 854. We ranked them not by dollars, which a single large filer can distort, but by breadth: how many different members touched each name. The answer is strikingly consensus-driven.
The 10 most-bought stocks
Ranked by the number of different members who bought each name over the trailing year:
- Microsoft — 15 members
- Amazon — 13 members
- Apple — 12 members
- Meta Platforms — 12 members
- Broadcom — 12 members
- NVIDIA — 11 members (and the single most-traded name, with 63 separate purchases)
- Alphabet — 11 members
- JPMorgan Chase — 11 members
- UnitedHealth Group — 8 members
- Netflix — 8 members
The 10 most-sold stocks
Ranked the same way, by the number of different members selling:
- Microsoft — 21 members
- Apple — 17 members
- UnitedHealth Group — 13 members
- Alphabet — 13 members
- JPMorgan Chase — 11 members
- NVIDIA — 10 members
- Johnson & Johnson — 10 members
- Amazon — 10 members
- Broadcom — 10 members
- Oracle — 10 members
The same five names, on both sides
Look at what tops both lists: Microsoft, Apple, NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Amazon. The same mega-caps dominate the buying and the selling. Congress is not taking a unified position on these companies so much as continuously churning them. Microsoft is the single most-traded stock on Capitol Hill in either direction — 15 members bought it over the year, and 21 sold it.
A few names lean one way. Meta and Broadcom appear heavily among purchases but not sales. Oracle and Johnson & Johnson rank among the most-sold but not the most-bought. And one name distorts the dollar tables without distorting the breadth tables: JPMorgan looks like an enormous buy by total disclosed value, but nearly all of that traces to a single member's outsized filings. Counted by how many members actually participated, it sits in the middle of the pack — which is exactly why we rank by breadth.
Every figure here comes from the members' own disclosures. You can see who bought what, when they filed, and how each position has performed since — by politician, ticker, and committee — at capitolmarkets.org.
Public record. STOCK Act-disclosed trades referenced here are legal under existing law. This piece argues for legislative change. It is not an accusation of insider trading or any other crime against any named individual.