I think the more interesting question is why the standards are so different.
From January 2025 through August 26, 2026, there were 565,678 corporate Form 4 transactions.
The median disclosure lag was just 2 days.
93.6% were reported within 4 calendar days.
Only 0.82%, or 4,632 filings, took longer than 45 days.
Now compare that with Congress.
The STOCK Act gives lawmakers 45 days to disclose a trade.
Across 14,288 congressional transactions, the median disclosure lag was 27 days.
And 6.4% were still reported after the legal deadline.
So corporate executives are operating under a deadline roughly 20 times tighter.
And they’re complying far better.
That doesn’t prove anyone is trading illegally.
But it raises a pretty simple question:
Why does the group with access to some of the most sensitive government information get so much more time to tell the public what it traded?
If transparency is supposed to protect investors, 45 days is a very long time to keep a trade private.
Especially when the people making those trades can influence the laws, contracts, tariffs and regulations that move the market.
Maybe the answer isn’t another insider trading law.
Maybe it’s simply:
If you trade while holding public office, disclose it fast.