Bryan Steil Stock Trades — Divestment History, Portfolio & Trading Reform

Bryan Steil has represented Wisconsin's 1st congressional district since January 2019, taking the seat vacated by former Speaker Paul Ryan. Born in Janesville, Wisconsin in 1981, he earned a B.S. from Georgetown University and a J.D. from the University of Wisconsin Law School. Before Congress, Steil worked as a staffer for then-Rep. Paul Ryan (2003-2004), as an attorney at McDermott, Will & Emery, as corporate counsel at Regal Beloit Corporation, and as general counsel at Charter NEX Films. He was appointed to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents in 2016. His committee assignments matter for understanding his relationship to financial markets. Steil chairs the House Administration Committee, which oversees House operations, ethics, and campaign finance. He also serves on the House Financial Services Committee, where he chairs the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and AI. In this role he authored the STABLE Act (a federal stablecoin framework) and has been a key architect of crypto regulation in the 119th Congress. His estimated net worth of approximately $2.1 million places him 252nd in Congress, per Quiver Quantitative.

The most notable aspect of Steil's stock trading story is that he has become Congress's leading voice for banning it. As Chairman of the House Administration Committee, Steil held a hearing titled 'Taking Stock of the STOCK Act' in November 2025 and introduced H.R. 7008, which would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and dependents from purchasing individual stocks. The bill also requires 7-day advance public notice before any sale and imposes penalties of the greater of $2,000 or 10% of the investment value. In June 2026, Steil pushed to expand the ban to prediction markets — barring lawmakers from betting on election outcomes or policy events on platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi. The Senate had already passed its own rule change barring senators from prediction market betting. Steil stated at the hearing: 'No lawmaker should be profiting from insider information while serving in the United States Congress.' I find this interesting because Steil walked the walk before proposing the legislation. He was effectively done trading by mid-2019, years before introducing H.R. 7008. That contrasts with some colleagues who proposed trading restrictions while still actively trading individual stocks. His bill has backing from House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump but lacks Democratic support partly because it does not extend to the President's family.