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A fact-check of @simplydigital.gr's reel · checked 19 Oct 2026

“How is this available for free ??”

True facts, wrong conclusion

Not correct

1 correct2 wrong

The short answer

A free tool that scrapes US congressional stock filings does exist. But copying those trades is not a money-making secret because disclosures are delayed by up to 45 days and fail to beat the index.

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Claim by claim

What's correct — 1 claim
Claim 2

“This free website tracks which stocks US politicians are buying and selling... updates on a daily basis”

Correct. This part is true. The website gathers official US government trading papers and puts them into a daily list you can view for free.

Show the working

The website shown (kadoa.com/congress) aggregates public trade disclosures from the Office of the Clerk of the US House of Representatives, the US Senate Financial Disclosures database, and the Office of Government Ethics (OGE Form 278-T) on an automated, daily-updated dashboard.

Where this comes from: US House and Senate public disclosure portals via Kadoa.

What's wrong — 2 claims
Claim 1 · the reel's main point

“Why is this money making secret available to everyone for free?”

Wrong. You cannot get rich copying these trades. By the law, politicians only have to reveal their stock buys up to 45 days later. By the time you find out, the move is already over.

Study not confirmed: Chen & Sacerdote, 2024
Show the working

Congressional trading disclosures are not an investable alpha-generating secret. Under the 2012 STOCK Act, lawmakers must report trades within 30 days of notification and no later than 45 days after the trade date. By definition, an outsider is acting on stale information. In "Relief Rally: Senators As Feckless As the Rest of Us at Stock Picking" and Chen & Sacerdote (2024, NBER Working Paper w35041), researchers evaluated trade-date and post-disclosure returns, showing that mimicking congressional portfolios after disclosure yielded no statistically significant excess returns above the S&P 500.

Where this comes from: Academic evaluations of US STOCK Act disclosures via NBER w35041.

Claim 3

“You can see the entire portfolio of every politician, how much they earned and what stocks they chose”

Wrong. The site cannot see their real bank balance or exact profits. Politicians only report broad ranges like "$1,000 to $15,000", so the site just makes an educated guess using the middle number.

Show the working

The website cannot display an exact portfolio or precise earnings, only models based on crude estimates. Under the STOCK Act, lawmakers report trade values in broad categorical bands ($1,001 to $15,000; $15,001 to $50,000; $50,001 to $100,000; up to over $50,000,000) rather than exact dollar amounts or share counts. As the site's own fine print states in the clip, headline figures assume the midpoint of each range and assume politicians never sold unless a sale was disclosed, creating wide tracking error.

Where this comes from: STOCK Act statutory disclosure brackets under 5 U.S.C. App. 102.

Is the reel's argument correct?

True facts can still lead to a wrong ending. Here is the reel's chain of thought, step by step.

  1. US politicians are legally required to file public stock disclosures, which scrapers compile dailyCorrect
  2. The tracker calculates estimated returns based on filing range midpointsCorrect
  3. Viewing this data provides a free, functional money-making trading edgeGoes wrong here
Not correct

The site really exists, but calling it a money-making hack is misleading. Stale data from weeks ago cannot help you beat the regular stock market.

Show the working

The data shown is genuine public record, but the premise that it functions as a "money making secret" fails on two mathematical points: reporting lag (up to 45 days) eliminates price discovery edge, and empirical performance across the legislative branch post-2012 fails to generate persistent alpha over standard market indices.

What it rests on

Could not confirm

Chen & Sacerdote (2024 — 12 papers fit this description; the check did not say which one it meant. Search for it

Also read, but not counted as proof: github.com, kadoa.com, dubapp.com, policycommons.net

Every study is looked up: how often it's cited, retractions, corrections and published replies.

Who posted it

@simplydigital.gr

How trustworthy is this account? Not checked yet. One post is not enough to judge.

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How this was checked

Who checked itAn AI model — Google's gemini-3.7-flash, on 19 Oct 2026. No person reads a check before it goes up.
What it looked atThe reel's video, its sound and the words on screen. It listed every claim, then checked each one.
What it checked againstLive web search. Every link was opened and checked before it went on this page.
How we checked the AIWe looked up every study it named. 1 could not be confirmed.

AI keeps getting better. If a newer model changes a verdict, this page will say so, and the old version stays readable.