U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, a wealthy businessman elected to Congress in 2024, recently took action to protect against a stock market downturn by purchasing between $1 million and $5 million in U.S. Treasury bills.

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

Excitement in artificial intelligence has pushed big tech stocks, and by extension the entire stock market, to record highs. But now, many experts worry about a bubble in the market and major losses if it bursts. That has a lot of investors looking for havens to store their cash and preserve their recent stock gains. In October, U.S. Rep. Tony Wied followed the trend and put between $1 million and $5 million into safer treasury bills.

We know this because federal law requires members of Congress to report when they buy and sell assets like stocks and bonds.

Wied is a Republican who represents the state’s 8th Congressional District in northeastern Wisconsin. The most recent addition to Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, he reported between $1.6 and $6.5 million in investment moves from October, by far the largest being a purchase of U.S. treasury bills, considered to be a slow-growing but safe asset.

A businessman from De Pere who was elected to his seat by a wide margin in 2024, he formerly owned a gas station chain in the Green Bay area. His district encompasses parts of Door County, Green Bay and Appleton. Like every other member of Congress, his seat will be up for grabs this year in the midterm elections. Wied has said publicly he plans to seek reelection.

His October periodic transaction report — the name for the document he’s required to file with the Clerk of the House about 45 days after he, his spouse or dependent children buy or sell a financial asset like a stock that’s worth more than $1,000 — is two pages long and lists 11 transactions.

A spokesperson for the congressman’s office said his investments are “solely managed through an independent financial advisor” and that the congressman doesn’t have a role in those decisions.

“All of his trades are reported monthly to the House Ethics committee in accordance with current law and congressional ethics guidelines,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to The Badger Project.

Many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle want to ban all members of Congress from trading individual stocks, because of the advantage federal politicians have over the average investor and the potential conflict of interest. Through their position in government, federal politicians often receive private and confidential information affecting the economy. Information that can be very lucrative when buying and selling stocks.

In December, dozens of former U.S. House members signed a letter advocating for the Restore Trust in Congress Act. The bill was introduced in September and seeks to prohibit members of Congress, their spouses and children from owning and trading stocks. The letter highlights the surge in stock trading in April 2025 before and after President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff policies were enacted and then partially rescinded, which briefly crashed the stock market. The bill is one of many recent attempts to put a stop to congressional trading.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan, usually on opposite ends of votes, are the only two members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation who currently appear as cosponsors on the bill, which has yet to make it to the House floor for a vote.

Wied publicly voiced support for the ban in a call-in town hall on Jan. 12, but he has continued to buy and sell stocks aggressively. In October, he reported purchases between $100,000 and $250,000 in Salesforce and ServiceNow, and also bought between $50,000 and $100,000 in HubSpot stock. All three are software companies that market to businesses. He sold between $100,000 and $250,000 in stock for Disney and Five Below, a discount retailer. He also partially or wholly sold his stock in Fortinet, Western Alliance Bancorp, Broadcom, Arista Networks and LCI Industries.

But by far Wied’s largest transaction from October was buying between $1 million and $5 million worth of U.S. treasury bills, short-term loans to the federal government that carry little risk and yield relatively small returns.

His periodic transaction report from November displays two sales, both worth between $15,000 and $50,000. One represented stock in a cybersecurity company and the other represented stock in a company that provides human resources software.

Wied, who loaned $500,000 to his own 2024 campaign, is very active in the stock market compared to other members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation. 

Pocan filed his last transaction report in 2024. The report listed two purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds in 2022 and 2023, both of which were worth between $15,000 and $50,000. Gwen Moore, a Democrat who represents Milwaukee, hasn’t reported an asset other than her legislative pension in more than 10 years. Glenn Grothman, a Republican who represents a district in eastern Wisconsin, reported three purchases of different types of U.S. bonds in 2023 and 2024. 

Previously, members of Congress were only required to report these transactions annually. But the STOCK Act of 2012 changed that. Now, members of Congress and some executive branch officials must report securities transactions after, at most, 45 days, according to OpenSecrets, a Washington-based watchdog group that focuses on money in politics. 

The federal law, which stands for Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, was an effort to combat insider trading by members of Congress, who can receive financially advantageous industry information before the general public. The act specifically prohibits these officials from profiting off information gained as part of their official duties, OpenSecrets writes.

The individual wealth of congressmembers often increases while they’re in office. While only 1% of Americans are millionaires, 40-50% of those sitting in the U.S. House are millionaires, according to the watchdog’s analysis. 

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi famously amassed a fortune in the tens of millions during her tenure in the U.S. House. She plans to retire in January 2027. And many others have seen huge gains in their stock portfolios while in office.

Members of Congress do see “significantly improved stock trading performance” after they move up the ranks to leadership positions, partly due to access to insider information, according to a working paper by researchers writing for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“In an era of growing political skepticism, stronger enforcement or reform of the STOCK Act may be necessary to preserve the integrity of public office and rebuild trust in government,” the paper concludes.

The penalty for submitting a report late is a $200 fine, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. It’s a tiny deterrent compared to the millions an individual can make through the stock market.

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin.