Late congressional trade disclosures
A congressional trade report is late when it is filed more than 45 days after the trade. The standard penalty is a $200 fee, and this site flags every late row and shows the number of days each trade took to report.
In brief
- The law gives 30 days from learning of a trade, and at most 45 days from the trade.
- This site measures from the trade date to the filing date and flags anything over 45 days.
- The fee is $200 and can be waived by the chamber's ethics committee.
- A late report is a paperwork failure; on its own it says nothing about the trade.
What is the deadline?
A member must report a trade within 30 days of being notified of it, and no later than 45 days after the trade. No extensions are available for these reports.
The two limits exist because members do not always place their own trades. A spouse or a money manager may trade, and the member finds out when a statement arrives. The 30-day clock starts then; the 45-day limit applies regardless.
How does this site decide a trade is late?
It subtracts the trade date from the filing date. If the result is more than 45 days, the row gets a "late" flag and the member's page counts it. The number itself is shown on every row in the Lag column.
This is the outer limit of the law, so the flag is conservative: a member who learned of a trade on day one and filed on day 40 broke the 30-day rule, but the public record does not always say when they learned of it, so the site does not flag it.
Rows from an amended Senate report carry no lag, because the gap would be measured to the date of the correction and not to the original filing.
What is the penalty?
A $200 fee, owed when a report is more than 30 days past due. The ethics committee of the member's chamber may waive it in extraordinary circumstances. Fee payments and waivers are not published trade by trade, so this site cannot tell you whether a particular late report was fined.
Does a late report mean something improper happened?
Not by itself. Reports are late for dull reasons: a broker's statement that arrived slowly, a trade in a spouse's account, a staff error. They can also be late for reasons the public would care about. The filing does not say which.
What a pattern of late reports does show is how seriously an office treats the disclosure rule. A member with one late row out of two hundred and a member who is late on most of them are telling you different things, and the Congress page lets you compare.
Why are the newest trades already weeks old?
Because of the deadline itself. A trade made today can lawfully stay private for 45 days. So the newest disclosures you see are trades from the last month or two, and the most recent few weeks of trading are always incomplete. This is why the trade map counts by disclosure date: a 30-day view by trade date would miss most of what will eventually be reported.
Questions and answers
How long do members of Congress have to report a stock trade?
They have 30 days from being notified of the trade, and never more than 45 days from the trade itself.
What does the late flag mean on Spot the Money?
It means the report was filed more than 45 days after the trade date. For corporate insiders the flag means a Form 4 filed more than 4 days after the trade.
Is a late congressional stock disclosure illegal?
It breaks the STOCK Act's deadline and normally carries a $200 late fee. It is not, by itself, evidence of insider trading.
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Not investment advice. This guide explains public records and how this site presents them. It makes no recommendation to buy or sell anything. All guides · All questions · Report an error