[throwaway13337]

So, apparently, on average senators do not beat the market as would be expected if this was rampant. So maybe they're not using insider information too much. Either that or, even given their privileged information, they still cannot turn that information into good trades.

I imagine it's more of the latter than the former. Stocks rarely follow rationality in the short term.

A study that talks more in depth about this was made last year: https://www.dartmouth.edu/press-releases/senators-stock-pick...

[noxer]

They know they are being watched. If they have information that would lead to good trades they can hardly use it themself. But certainly they can give it to "friends". That may not directly make them rich but can significantly improve donations if you know what I mean and politician donations are often way more than a salary.

If you make all your friends rich you either will be rich too or you have terrible friends.

[nuisance-bear]

Whoa, the press release does not match the results. Scroll down to Tables 2a,2b on pp. 26-27 of the NBER paper.

These are their 1 year horizon alpha's and tstats against Fama French 3 factor:

          alpha     tstat
   Long   6.5%      6.6
   Shrt   5.0%      3.7

Those numbers are economically and statistically significant.