Rick Larsen, Democrat of Washington's 2nd district, is not generating headlines right now. Zero Google News stories in the last 24 hours. The only social chatter about him is old grievances about 2016 caucus mechanics and a photo op with Bill Maher. By the standards of the current Congress, that makes him practically a monk. What he is generating, quietly, is a paper trail. Eight disclosed trades, all filed on April 7, 2026. Four sales. Four purchases. A full portfolio rotation in a single day, all in the $1,000-to-$15,000 range, from a member who sits on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The trades are in the public record. The calendar is the thing.
April 7 Was a Specific Kind of Day
April 7, 2026 was not a random Monday. It landed in the middle of a stretch of market volatility that had investors of all varieties reassessing their exposure. Larsen's disclosures show he used that day to exit four positions: American Express ($AXP), American Water Works ($AWK), Broadridge Financial Solutions ($BR), and Paychex ($PAYX). He simultaneously entered four new positions: Carrier Global ($CARR), Casey's General Stores ($CASY), NextEra Energy ($NEE), and Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies ($WAB).
The out-column is a clean sweep of financial and financial-adjacent names. The in-column is infrastructure, energy, and logistics. Whether that rotation reflects a macro thesis, a conversation with a financial advisor, or something else entirely is not something the disclosure form explains. It never does.
Members are required to disclose. That's the rule. Yes, really.
The One Trade That Has a Committee Angle
Larsen sits on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. That committee's jurisdiction covers, among other things, aviation, railroads, pipelines, surface transportation, and infrastructure broadly. It does not cover banking regulation, utilities rate-setting, or payroll services. So the four sales on April 7 are just trades, not a committee story.
The purchases are a different conversation. Carrier Global ($CARR) is an HVAC and building systems company with significant exposure to federal construction and infrastructure contracting. Per Blind Trust's full disclosure record for Larsen, that CARR purchase carried a Transportation committee overlap flag. Westinghouse Air Brake ($WAB) makes freight and transit equipment. Also flagged. NextEra Energy ($NEE) sits in the utilities overlap bucket.
The committee overlap trades are the ones the STOCK Act's disclosure regime was designed to surface. Larsen bought Carrier Global, a company whose revenue lines touch infrastructure contracting, on the same day his committee was operating in that policy space. The 30-day alpha on that CARR purchase came in at plus-11.3 percentage points versus the S&P 500.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.
The Alpha Record Is Honest About Itself
Larsen's full scored sample across 20 trades shows 8 positive outcomes and 12 negative ones. The mean 30-day alpha across the sample is negative 1.4%. It's barely a record. More than half his scored trades lost ground against the index.
The best single trade in the sample: that CARR purchase on April 7, up 11.3 points in 30 days. The second-best: a sale of Mondelez International ($MDLZ) back in January, which clocked 11.0 points of alpha. Third: a purchase of Darden Restaurants ($DRI) in January, up 7.5 points. Neither the Mondelez sale nor the Darden purchase carry a committee overlap flag, so they're just trades.
The worst trades are worse. The Broadridge sale on April 7 came in at negative 14.6 points of alpha, meaning the stock outperformed the market by nearly 15 points after he sold it. He also sold American Water Works on the same day, a utilities-adjacent name that sits in the committee overlap bucket, and that position posted negative 16.7 points of alpha in 30 days. If you're scoring by outcome alone: he sold AWK right before it ran.
Eight of 20 positive. Twelve of 20 negative. Mean alpha: minus 1.4 percent. That's the full record, not a highlight reel.
The Banking Votes Are a Floor Vote, Not a Committee Vote
On May 20, 2026, Larsen voted Yea on four financial-sector bills that passed the House: the American Access to Banking Act, the Community Bank Deposit Access Act of 2025, the Keeping Deposits Local Act, and the 25th Anniversary of 9/11 Commemorative Coin Act. On June 25, he voted Yea on the Financial Exploitation Prevention Act of 2025.
These are floor votes. Banking regulation sits under the House Financial Services Committee, not Transportation and Infrastructure. Larsen is not on Financial Services. So these votes carry no committee oversight angle, and the April 7 sales of financial names (American Express, Broadridge, Paychex) have no flagged overlap with those bills. The timing of the sales preceded those votes by six weeks. The data doesn't draw a line between them.
What it does show is a member who sold four financial-sector positions in early April and then voted on financial-sector legislation in May. The Venn diagram has no overlap in the data. Whether it does in practice is not something a disclosure form resolves.
The Quiet Part
The social conversation about Larsen right now is mostly old news: 2016 caucus frustrations and a Bluesky post about a photo with a cable television personality. Three posts total. He's not trending. He's not in trouble. He's not in the middle of anything particularly newsworthy by the standards of this Congress.
He's just a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee who bought Carrier Global, a transportation-adjacent infrastructure company, on April 7, 2026, and disclosed it. He bought Westinghouse Air Brake on the same day. He bought NextEra Energy. He bought Casey's General Stores, which is a Midwest convenience store chain with fuel exposure. None of those are financial companies. All of them show up on the same date the financial stocks left the portfolio.
The CARR position returned 11.3 points over the S&P in the following 30 days. WAB's 30-day alpha from that disclosure record is not among the flagged best or worst performers, which means it landed somewhere in the middle of the sample. NEE posted negative 4.9 points. AWK, the utilities name he sold, posted negative 16.7 points, meaning the stock went up after he exited.
The math on the utilities trades: he sold AWK at a loss to the index and bought NEE at a loss to the index. The committee overlap flag is on both. The net outcome for those two utilities-overlap trades is negative on both sides of the ledger.
What the Transportation Committee Means Here
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has oversight of federal spending on roads, bridges, rail, airports, ports, and the entire physical backbone of American commerce. Carrier Global makes HVAC systems installed in commercial and government buildings, with a significant contracting footprint. Westinghouse Air Brake makes braking systems and equipment for freight rail and transit, which is squarely in the committee's lane.
Larsen has served on Transportation and Infrastructure for years. He knows what the committee touches. The committee, in turn, touches the business lines of companies he bought on April 7.
The alpha on the CARR trade came in at 11.3 points. The alpha on WAB is not in the best or worst list, which means it's somewhere between negative 13 and positive 11. The committee's jurisdiction is public. The trades are disclosed. The 30-day returns are computable.
It's legal. That's the part that should bother you.
The Baseline
Eight trades in 90 days. Eight of 20 scored trades positive. A mean alpha of negative 1.4 percent across the full sample. One committee-overlap purchase that outperformed the market by 11.3 points. Two committee-overlap trades in utilities that both lost to the index. A batch of financial stocks sold six weeks before a raft of banking bills hit the floor, with no flagged overlap between the two.
Larsen is not a marquee figure in the congressional trading discourse. He's not on the leaderboard. He's not in the news. He filed eight trades and went quiet.
The full disclosure record is here. The committee jurisdiction is public. The vote dates and trade dates are both in the filings. The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.