How do the House and Senate publish stock trade disclosures?

Where do House members file?

The House Ethics Committee's financial disclosure page says that Title I of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. 13101 to 13111) requires Members, Officers, certain employees of the House and related offices, and candidates for the House to file financial disclosure reports with the Clerk of the House. Members, officers and certain employees must also disclose transactions over $1,000 in certain securities by the earlier of 30 days from being made aware of the transaction or 45 days from the transaction.

Annual reports and periodic transaction reports (including amendments) are filed with the Clerk, not with the Committee. They may be completed and submitted either through an electronic filing system at fd.house.gov or on paper forms delivered to the Clerk at the Legislative Resource Center, Room B-81 Cannon House Office Building. The Committee strongly encourages electronic filing. Paper filers submit an original with an original signature and photocopies. The Clerk's own site has a "Financial Disclosure Reports" page under its Disclosures menu, which is where the public reads the filings: disclosures-clerk.house.gov.

What does the law say about posting?

The STOCK Act, Public Law 112-105, has a public-access provision. It says the reports must be made available to the public on the official websites of the Senate and the House of Representatives not later than 30 days after the forms are filed, and that notices of extension for financial disclosure are to be made available electronically along with the related disclosure. A parallel provision covers executive branch agencies' websites. So the legal deadline for posting is 30 days after filing, which is additional to the filing delay itself (see why public disclosures are always late).

What about the Senate?

The Senate publishes through its own electronic financial disclosure search site. When we tried to open it, and the Senate Ethics page for financial disclosure, by script on 10 October 2026, both refused automated requests, and existing OQRO articles note the same for the search site. We therefore make no statement here about the Senate's file formats, search options or how quickly it posts reports. Open the Senate site in a browser and check its own instructions.

This is a limit of the sources we could read, not a finding about the Senate. The legal requirement is the same for both chambers, as the STOCK Act text above shows.

Are paper filings readable by programs?

OQRO's coverage page states that reports filed on paper and scanned are not machine-readable and are not included in its data, so a trade that was filed only on paper will be on the official site but not on OQRO. The coverage page lists exactly what OQRO includes and the methodology page says how.

How do the two chambers' reports differ for a reader?

What we can say from the sources we read is limited to the House: the House form is a single-purpose document with a list of transactions, ownership marks, dates of transaction and notification, and a value category (see how to read a Congress periodic transaction report). For the Senate, read the filing itself. When you compare a House member and a Senator, compare the underlying official filings, not a summary of either.

Which date is which?

Several dates are in play: the date of the transaction, the date the member was notified of it, the date the report was filed, and the date it was posted. The House form asks for the first two. The deadline is the earlier of 30 days after notification or 45 days after the transaction, and the form says a $200 penalty is assessed on anyone who files more than 30 days late.

How can you check a trade yourself?

For a House member, open the Clerk's Financial Disclosure Reports page, find the member's filing, and read the periodic transaction report. Compare three dates: the transaction date, the date the member was notified, and the date of the signature on the report. The deadline is the earlier of 30 days after notification or 45 days after the transaction, so you can see whether the filing was timely. For a Senator, open the Senate's financial disclosure search in a browser and read the filing there; we could not read it by script and make no claim about its layout.

If a tracker's figure and the official filing differ, the filing is the authority. A tracker may round, group or omit paper filings, and the official site is where an error would be corrected by an amended report.

What this does not tell you

The existence of a report on a chamber's site says that the filing was made and posted, not that it is complete or correct beyond the filer's certification. It does not say why a trade was made. The two sites also do not offer the same tools, and we did not compare them. For a combined list across both chambers with each trade linked to the official filing, see the politician trades page.