[throw10920]

> Also, Congress has 532 people, so by statistical certainty we should expect some to beat the market.

Congress has many individuals that consistently beat the market by significant margins over a prolonged period of time, far past the point of reasonable arguments that you can make based on statistics.

[JumpCrisscross]

"We find weak evidence of informed trading for the pre-Congress period, suggesting that informed traders are not being selected into office. When combined with our finding that the portfolios of members serving on powerful committees outperform the market during their second term in office, this provides additional evidence that serving on influential committees is the mechanism by which members of Congress earn abnormal returns."

http://busecon.wvu.edu/phd_economics/pdf/16-25.pdf

[paulpauper]

Congress may outperform in the aggregate, but this is not enough to prove that they illegally traded. There are other possible explanations.

[geoduck14]

What explanations do you suggest?

[ctvo]

Being new congress members have given them ample free time to learn financial theories and market strategies from MIT OpenCourseware