House of Representatives Stock Trade Analysis

The United States Government releases the stock trading information of those in Congress on a regular basis. In this website, this data was examined and analyzed using various visualizations. The data that was used was obtained from a JSON file containing dictionaries of information regarding each trade. The data was cleaned, separated and transformed into more readable data.

Going into this analysis, the primary objective was to observe how those in the House of Representatives traded in the stock market. There was no definite conclusion that was expected to be taken away from this other than an insight into how those in some of the most powerful positions in the United States handled their own personal finances and to see any differences between the representatives along state and party lines.

The data that follows shows these differences and may subvert some expectations that one might have going into this. In particular, the spending differences between states as well as between parties was information that was not expected.

This analysis and ability to display this data is important for the transparency between those who hold power and their governed that is so crucial to democracy. It is the goal of this website to better inform anyone who browses it on how those in congressional positions handle their money.

Individual Representatives' Trades

This table has columns that describe the name, state, total trade sum, total trade number, and party of individual representatives from the U.S. House of Representatives. The table includes data from the years 2020-2023 of every representative who made a trade on the U.S. stock market. Surprisingly, only 189 out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives made trades within those years.

The cells of the table for the columns, name, state, and party, are color coded based on the party the representatives is a part of. Republicans are coded red, Democrats are coded blue, Libertarians are coded gold, and any none-described parties are coded gray. The total trade sum for each representative is a cumulative total of every trade the representative has made within those years. This includes both purchases and sales, so it does not reflect a total amount of gain or loss. As a note, the data that was provided does not disclose the exact amount of purchase or sale. Instead, a range is given for each transaction. In order to determine a value, the average of the upper and lower bound of the range was calculated, and was assumed to be the value of the transaction. The cells of this column are color coded so that the largest total sums are on the darker side of the green color scale, and the smaller values are towards the lighter side of the scale. For the total trade number column, the number of trades that each representative made within the time frame is displayed. The higher number of trades correspond to a dark purple colored cell, and the lower number corresponds to a lighter purple. These data values are more closely investigated in the following visualizations within the website.

Total Transaction Distribution

This choropleth is a representation of the total trade sums of representatives based on their respective states. The color of each state corresponds to the amount of money that the representatives as a whole traded.

By looking at the map, it is clear that the majority of states are around the same in terms of money traded, but there are some that deviate somewhat. As expected, states with large populations tended to spend the most as is the case with states like California, Texas, and Florida. However, there were some more unexpected outliers as well. States like Washington, Oklahoma, and Tennessee traded more than expected and New Jersey is much higher than expected for its size. Additionally some states like New Mexico had very little trades. Note that Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota had no available data and thus are blank on the map.

Party Total Transaction Amount Distribution

Between the two parties, it seems that the Democrats have traded a bit more in total transactions than the Republicans. The Democrats make up about 55.4% of the trade total at $530 million, and the Republicans make up about 44.6% of the total with almost $426 million. The Democrats have a total transaction amount of about 10% more than the Republicans. The Libertarian party can barely be seen on the pie chart as there is only one representative that has traded only $48,500, which is a minute part of the total.

Although 10% does not seem like a large difference between the two parties, the bar graph showing the totals side by side makes the difference between the parties much more visible in comparison to the pie chart. The difference in amounts is also easy to estimate at around $100,000,000 between them. Again, the Libertarian’s part of the whole is barely seen, and is almost invisible on the chart.

The transaction distribution between the 3 years, 2020, 2021, and 2022 is displayed in a pie chart. It is interesting to note that the most amount of transactions, 45.6%, occurred during 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the total transactions include both purchases and sales, it makes sense that a higher number of sales would occur during the 2020 pandemic and the stock market recession that followed. The next year, 2021, accounted for 33.8% of the total transactions, and surprisingly, 2020 accounted for the least at 20.6%. Before examining the data, it would be assumed that the percentage of transactions increased after the pandemic, but that is not the case.

Investigating the exact number of transactions per year, the bar graph shows the continuous decrease between 2020-2022. The drop between 2020 and 2021 was around 2000 transactions, and a similar drop occurred between 2021 and 2022. Returning to the idea that stock transitions would increase after the pandemic, a total decrease from 2020 to 2022 of almost 55% is extremely surprising.

Total Amount of Money Used In Transactions Per Year

Although the number of transactions dropped by almost 2,000 between 2020 and 2021, the amount of money used within the transactions was not far off from each other. In 2020, about 38% of the total amount of money within the 3 years was moved, and 36.5% of the total money moved occurred during 2021. 2022 had the largest difference, sitting at only 25.6% of the total amount of money. The 2021 percentage is surprising, since there was a major dropoff in the number of transactions in 2021, but 2022 was in line with the low number of transactions that occurred during that year.

Investigating the bar chart, the change between 2020 and 2021’s amount of money used in transactions is not as stark as the change between the same two years in their number of transactions. While the drop in number of transactions was around 2,000, about a 30% drop, the drop in total amount used in transaction was around $13 million, only a 3.6% decrease. The bar chart highlights the small decline between 2020 and 2021, but it also highlights the large difference between those two years and 2022. From 2020 to 2022, the total amount of money moved in transactions decreased 32%. This major drop once again follows the decreasing trend, and the low number of transactions that occurred in 2020.

Investigating the pie chart of the representative’s total number of trades, it is surprising to see that the top ten representatives make up 37.3% of the total number. This is interesting since there are only 189 members that conducted trades, so only 5% of the representatives make up 37.3% of the trades. It is also interesting to note that Josh Gottenheimer, at 8.42%, almost doubles the next closest representative, Gilbert Cisneros, who is at 4.65% of the total. There are 28 representatives that each individually make up 1% or more of the total number of trades, when each of the 189 representatives should only be making up 0.5% of the total, if the distribution was equal. Overall, the pie chart shows how the top number of trades is mostly condensed within a small number of representatives.

The bar chart investigating the number of charts shows a more visual difference between the different representatives. Josh Gottenheimer’s number of trades sits above 1400, while the next closest is below 800 trades. If a year has 252 trading days associated with it, Gottenheimer averaged a total of 1.87 trades per day. This number probably indicates that somebody is managing his investments, but it is unlikely that Gottenheimer does not have a say in the transactions. Some questions may be raised on how much time he spends monitoring the stock market, versus participating as a representative. Over the three year period, 27 representatives made over 200 trades, 13 made over 400, 9 made over 500, 6 made 600 or more, and 3 made over 700. The only traders that came close to Gottenheimer’s average of 1.87 trades per day were Gilbert Cisneros at 1.04 trades per day, and Donald S. Beyer at 0.99 trades per day. The high number of trades between a small group of representatives raises the question of how involved the representative is with their trades, especially if they are supposed to be attending to congressional duties.

The pie chart displays the distribution of the total amount of money that was used within stock transaction the past 3 years. While Josh Gottenheimer is still the top share, at 12.2%, the order afterwards does not follow the order that the total number of transactions chart did. The next closest representative is Suzan K. Delbene, at 9.41%, while on the total number of transactions chart, Gilbert Cisneros sat at the second spot. In fact, none of the representatives who sat in the positions of 2-7 on the transactions chart are in the 2-7 spots of the total amount of money used in transactions; positions 2-7 are all new faces. Moreover, there are 27 representatives that sit above the standard 1% if the total amount of money used. This is similar to the number of representatives who made up more than 1% in the total number of transactions, which counted to 28. Similarly, each representative should only be taking up about 0.5% of the pie chart if the distribution was even.

Looking at the bar chart total trade sums, some of the highest total values are $124.4 million for Josh Gottenheimer (D-NJ), $96.3 million for Suzan K. DelBene (D-WA), $76.6 million for Mark E. Green (R-TN) , $49.5 million for Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), $48.9 million for Kevin Hearn (R-OK), $51.9 million for Van Taylor (R-TX), $39.1 million for Scott H. Peters (D-CA), $32.1 million for Michael T. McCaul (R-TX), $31.6 million for Alan S. Lowenthal (D-CA), and $20.5 million for Peter Meijer (R-MI). In total, there are 25 representatives that sit above a total of $10 million in trades, 11 over $20 million, 6 over $40 million, 3 over $60 million, 2 over $80 million and only 1 above $100 million.

Referring to the individual representatives, it is interesting to see some repeats in state representatives such as California and Texas. Another thing to note is that the larger traders do not specifically correspond to one party, and are a mix between both Democrats and Republicans.