Congress vs S＆P 500: What the Numbers Actually Say

Intro

When people say congress vs s&p 500, they usually mean one thing: do lawmakers (or their households) outperform the market. The honest answer is that “Congress returns” are hard to measure cleanly because trades can be disclosed up to 45 days after they happen, which makes real-time copying messy.
So the best public, data-backed proxy is to compare strategies built from disclosed activity against the S&P 500 Total Return Index, then sanity-check with academic evidence.

Tables + Analysis

Table 1: “Congress-trading strategy” vs S&P 500 (NANC, as of 12/31/2025)

Source: Subversive ETFs performance table.

What this means: Over the longer window, NANC has outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index since inception, but it has not won every short window. Much of this outperformance is driven by a handful of high-profile traders; for a deeper look at individual track records, see our breakdown of Nancy Pelosi’s stock performance. If you want a decision rule, use this: “Does the strategy win over multi-year horizons after fees, or is it just getting lucky in one hot quarter?” On this snapshot, the longer horizon looks stronger than the short horizon.

Table 2: Another “Congress-trading strategy” vs S&P 500 (GOP, as of 12/31/2025)

Source: Subversive ETFs performance table.

What this means: This is the part most people miss in the “congress vs s&p 500” debate. Strategy construction matters more than the headline. Two portfolios based on congressional activity can land in very different factor exposures (growth vs value, concentrated vs diversified), and the long-run gap can be huge. If your goal is “use Congress data as signal,” you still need to decide what risk profile you are actually buying.

Table 3: What research says about Congress “outperforming”

Sources: peer-reviewed and academic summaries.

What this means: There is no single, timeless answer. One big takeaway is that results depend on the era, the branch (Senate vs House), and measurement method. If you are building content for investors, the responsible framing is: “Congress trading can be a useful signal stream, but it is not a magic alpha faucet.”

Table 4: The disclosure lag that breaks most “copy trade” fantasies

Sources: Congress.gov CRS and U.S. Senate Ethics guidance.

What this means: If someone claims “Congress beats the S&P 500,” ask them one question: did they measure returns from the trade date or from the disclosure date? Measuring from the trade date can make performance look better, but it is not what an outside investor can replicate consistently. This same challenge applies when evaluating what percent of retail investors beat the S&P 500, where timing and cost assumptions can dramatically change the results.

Conclusion / Callout

So, who wins in congress vs s&p 500? If you mean “do individual lawmakers always beat the market,” the evidence is mixed and heavily time-dependent. If you mean “can a public strategy built from disclosed congressional activity outperform,” the answer can be yes over some multi-year windows, but it is not consistent across strategies and it is constrained by disclosure lag.