Michael McCaul spent part of this week telling PBS that Bill Pulte is unqualified to run the DNI and that FISA absolutely must be extended. Serious national-security stuff. Statesmanlike, even. Meanwhile, per his own disclosure filings, McCaul's household has logged 107 stock trades in the last 90 days, roughly 1.2 trades per calendar day, weekends included. The foreign-policy elder statesman apparently keeps two very busy schedules.
The FISA Hawk Has a Busy Brokerage
In his PBS interview, McCaul positioned himself as a grown-up in a room full of political appointees he doesn't respect. His critique of Pulte was blunt. His case for FISA extension was practiced. This is McCaul's wheelhouse: he sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Homeland Security, and he's been doing this long enough to know which acronyms to drop for maximum gravitas.
The FISA vote itself, H.R. 9238, came to the House floor on June 11. McCaul voted Yea. It failed anyway.
None of that touches his portfolio. But his portfolio is worth discussing on That's active management at a clip that would embarrass some hedge-fund analysts.
What the Last Two Weeks Actually Look Like
Pull just the last week of McCaul's disclosed trades and the activity is striking in its variety. April 28 alone: purchases of Mastercard, S&P Global, Workday, and Danaher, all in the K-5K range. The next day, April 29: a purchase of Teradyne (5K-$50K) and Intuit (K-5K), plus sales of Vulcan Materials and a position flagged as INCGEV. April 27 had purchases and sales of Mastercard and Visa on the same day, bought one payments giant, sold another, and added a position in Pandora (ticker: P) for good measure.
This is a trading desk.
On April 30, he sold out of NVAER. On April 24, he bought EQT (5K-$50K) and sold a Shell-related position (PLCSHEL, 5K-$50K). The energy in-and-out moves are a recurring feature. Earlier in the 90-day window he sold Chevron (5K-$50K) and sold Shell (5K-$50K), both of which, per the alpha record, turned out to be losing sells: the stocks moved against him after he exited, generating 30-day alpha of -18.8% and -15.3% respectively.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.
The Alpha Record: Honest Accounting
Blind Trust has scored 104 of McCaul's trades. The record: 47 positive alpha, 57 negative alpha, mean 30-day excess return versus the S&P 500 of -0.6%. He is, in aggregate, slightly underperforming the market while doing an enormous amount of work to get there.
The best individual trades are real: a Humana purchase on April 10 produced +34.5% 30-day alpha. Insight Direct (NSIT) bought April 23 came in at +22.7%. The Teradyne buy on April 29 is currently tracking +21.7%. None of those carry a committee-overlap angle, they're just good trades, or lucky ones, in sectors outside McCaul's committee jurisdiction.
The worst trades are equally real: that Chevron sale on March 23 cost -18.8% in missed upside. The Vulcan Materials sale on April 29 is at -15.3%. Selling Shell in March cost another -15.3%. Fifty-seven out of 104 scored trades are in negative alpha territory. The winners are louder, but the losers are the majority.
What are the odds that 107 trades in 90 days produces a mean alpha of -0.6%? Computable. What are the odds anyone in leadership asks about it? Lower.
Where the Committee Angle Actually Lives
McCaul sits on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security. Those committees don't regulate banks, payments networks, or enterprise software. So his Mastercard buys and sells, his S&P Global positions, his Workday and Danaher trades, those are floor-vote territory, not committee-overlap territory. The STOCK Act requires disclosure. It doesn't require anyone to explain themselves.
Where it gets more textured: the committee_overlap trades flagged in the data involve Technology and Financial Services sector classifications. McCaul's committees don't formally cover those sectors, the note in the data is clear that Financial Services belongs to the Financial Services Committee, not Foreign Affairs. But the flagged trades are worth naming.
Two purchases of Intuit in early March, March 2 and March 12, both K-5K, produced 30-day alpha of +14.2% and +5.6% respectively. A MercadoLibre (MELI) purchase on March 12 came in at +4.4%. A ServiceNow (NOW) buy on March 4 returned +3.3%. An S&P Global purchase on March 24 produced +3.9%.
McCaul also bought Intuit again on April 29, per the most recent filings.
These are trades in the public record. The overlap flags reflect how the data system categorizes them. Readers get to bring their own opinion.
The Banking Votes and the Portfolio
On May 20, McCaul voted Yea on four banking-adjacent bills that all passed: the American Access to Banking Act, the Community Bank Deposit Access Act of 2025, and the Keeping Deposits Local Act. He also voted Yea on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Commemorative Coin Act, which is less financially consequential but tells you something about how many votes a member casts in a single day.
None of those banking bills fall under his committee jurisdiction. Foreign Affairs doesn't write community bank deposit rules. So the votes are floor votes, full stop, not an oversight angle. But the context is that McCaul was actively trading financial-sector names (Mastercard, Visa, S&P Global) in the same general timeframe as these banking floor votes. The trades happened April 27-29. The votes happened May 20. There's no overlap flag in the data, and we're not drawing a line between them. The calendar is just the calendar.
Members are required to disclose. They are not required to divest, recuse, abstain, or explain the timing. That's the rule. Yes, really.
107 Trades and the One Story Everyone's Missing
The Bluesky conversation around McCaul has been tracking his volume: one widely-circulated post noted over $400K in buys and over $500K in sells across a three-day stretch, calling it "significant portfolio churn." Another post placed him alongside Ro Khanna in a list of members holding Meta. The volume is the story the public is already noticing.
What the public doesn't have is the alpha math. Forty-seven wins, fifty-seven losses, mean alpha of -0.6%. A member doing 107 trades in 90 days, sitting on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security, going on PBS to talk about intelligence community competence, and running a portfolio that is, in aggregate, slightly behind the index.
The foreign-policy gravitas and the trading velocity coexist in the same person and the same public record. One is the subject of the PBS interview. The other is the subject of the disclosure filing. Both are public information. Blind Trust covers the second one, because someone has to.
The full trade history is on file at Blind Trust. All 107 of them. Scroll as far as you like.