[chis]

There are a lot of strong claims that the paper does not make. It never says that leaders outperform index funds. It just says very specifically that leaders outperform other members of congress. The paper also does not include any clear charts on the actual returns the congressional leaders were getting.

Maybe I'm simply too dumb to interpret this paper, but overall I find it unconvincing of anything notable or scandalous.

[0xWTF]

I mean, there's additional evidence https://unusualwhales.com/politics/article/congress-trading-...

At this point, there's a whole body of evidence

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10590...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/cong...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2501822122

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472...

https://campaignlegal.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Congre...

[chis]

I'm interested in the specific claim that Congresspeople are trading in ways that beats SPY, and I think it's just not true.

The Unusual Whales piece says that in 2023, Democrats had 31% returns, Republicans 18%, and SPY was 25%. Doing a weighted calculation, I get (31212+18222)/(212+222) = 25% exactly. So that piece provides some strong evidence that in that year, Congress did not outperform the market, despite attempting to imply the opposite.

Your other links are just general speculation on the subject, and in fact link 4 even says "House and Senator stock returns are consistent with random stock picking."

I do think Congress should probably be restricted from options and maybe short-term trading in general. But I get frustrated by all these doomers who think Congress is corrupt and doing insider trading all the time when there's just not any generalized evidence for it.