Twenty-Two Late Trades. The House Already Voted. The Senate Hasn’t.
Rep. Michael Rulli filed on August 7. Thirty-two trades. Twenty-two of them past the 45-day STOCK Act clock. The oldest is November 2024. He took office in 2024. That means one of his first real periodic transaction reports is a pile of late Mag7.
The STOCK Act is not complicated. If you are in Congress and you trade an individual stock, the public is supposed to see it within 45 days. Rulli, a freshman Republican from Ohio’s 6th and a member of Energy and Commerce, blew that clock on 22 of 32 trades in the August 7 periodic transaction report. NOTUS reviewed the filing. The local papers followed. The names are the ones you would expect on a managed mega-cap sleeve: Apple, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, plus Palantir and Pfizer.
Each line is in the $1,001–$15,000 band. That is how the form works — ranges, not tickets. NOTUS puts the tardy cluster between $22,022 and $330,000. Some recaps have used a higher ceiling near $480,000 on the whole disclosure. We are going to stay with the NOTUS range on the late trades, because that is the number tied to a document review, not a screenshot. Three of the trades are from 2024, a dozen from 2025, seven from before June 2026. The newest activity in the pile runs as recently as August 6. So this is not only a “broker forgot 2024” story. It is a clock that has been broken for a while.
Rulli’s office pointed at a Merrill Lynch managed account and did not answer whether a fine was paid. House Ethics starts those at $200. Two hundred dollars is not a market event. Twenty-two late lines on Mag7 and Palantir, from a member who sits on the committee that touches telecom, energy, and drug policy, is a transparency event. Those are different things. Keep them separate.
The House already voted. That is the other half of this tape.
On July 22 the House passed H.R. 7008, the Stop Insider Trading Act, 232–198. Bryan Steil’s bill bars members, spouses, and dependent children from buying individual stocks. Existing holdings can be kept; sales require public notice; realized profit on a sale can be forfeited. The president and vice president are not in the bill. That is the hole Democrats flagged on the floor, and it is still the hole. The Senate has not moved it.
Rulli voted yes. That is allowed, and it is also the detail that makes the August 7 filing sting. You can vote to stop the next purchase and still be 45 days late on the last 22. The STOCK Act is the disclosure law that is already on the books. H.R. 7008 is the purchase ban that is not. Mixing them up is how people write “Congress banned stock trading” and then act surprised when a PTR lands two years late.
This is also not a one-party story. The same week, Sen. Ron Wyden was late on a six-figure share exchange from 2025 made by his wife. His office called it automatic and said she keeps separate finances. Fine. The list of STOCK Act violators over the last year is long enough that treating any single name as a unique scandal is lazy. Armstrong, Britt, Collins, Hickenlooper, Rounds, Fetterman on the Senate side. A pile of House names you already know. The process is the story. The $200 fine is why the process stays the story.
Confluence with this week’s tape — carefully
The late cluster is Mag7, Palantir, Pfizer. This week’s tape is a 5-handle 30-year and heavy duration tech. Do not mash those together into “Congress sold Nvidia before the yield spike.” We do not have a dated, complete buy/sell tape in front of us that would support that sentence, and we are not going to write it. What we do have is a freshman on Energy and Commerce who is months late on names the market is currently repricing for duration. That is a transparency miss that happens to sit next to a rates story. It is not, by itself, a sell ticket.
Palantir is the one name on the list that is not just a mega-cap sleeve. Defense and immigration contractor, frequent Congress tape, and a committee member who was late on it. Score that as “worth a row,” the same way you score a late filing from anyone who sits on Armed Services or Intelligence. Then read the trade date. If the line is November 2024, it is not this week’s flow.
We have written the notification clock before. The rule has not changed. Forty-five days. The fine is still a rounding error. The edge, if there is one, is the combination of committee, ticker, and recency — not the PDF hitting the clerk. Date of trade, not date of file. Always.
What to do with it
If you run a Congress desk, add the Rulli PTR as a late cluster and tag the tickers. Do not auto-promote it to a signal until you have trade dates, not just a headline. If a second Energy and Commerce member prints late energy or late Palantir this month, that is the beginning of a pattern. One freshman and a managed-account excuse is a compliance story.
Watch the Senate more than you watch the next Ohio clip. H.R. 7008 on the floor would change what you can even see. A buy ban with a keep-or-sell rule and a notice-to-sell requirement is a smaller tape, not a cleaner one. Until that happens, the STOCK Act is still the law, $200 is still the starting fine, and 22 late lines on Mag7 is still how a freshman opens his disclosure book. The House already voted to stop the next purchase. The last 22 still showed up late. That is the state of the Congress tape this week.