A Different Kind of Congressional Trading Story

Retail investors have gotten pretty good at tracking congressional stock trades, often hunting for tips about hot growth stocks or companies positioned to land government contracts. But sometimes the most interesting moves are the boring ones.

Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) recently disclosed a series of stock purchases that won't make headlines for insider trading concerns, but they might actually teach retail investors something useful about building wealth slowly.

The December Buying Spree

According to disclosures tracked by MarketDash, Doggett made five separate stock purchases in December:

• Dec. 18: Bought $1,000 to $15,000 in Home Depot (HD) stock
• Dec. 15: Bought $1,000 to $15,000 in Coca-Cola (KO) stock
• Dec. 12: Bought $1,000 to $15,000 in PPG Industries (PPG) stock
• Dec. 12: Bought $1,000 to $15,000 in International Business Machines (IBM) stock
• Dec. 9: Bought $1,000 to $15,000 in Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) stock

Four of these five companies are members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, tracked by the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA). The outlier is PPG Industries, the paint and protective coatings company that's been around since 1883.

Here's where it gets interesting: A quick look at Doggett's trading history shows he buys these exact same stocks multiple times every single year. This isn't stock picking. This is something else entirely.

The Dividend Reinvestment Play

All five of these December purchases were made using dividends from existing holdings. Doggett is practicing what's known as dividend reinvestment, where instead of pocketing quarterly dividend payments as cash, you immediately use that money to buy more shares of the same company.

The congressman appears to do this religiously throughout the year, with purchases of these five stocks typically occurring in March, April, June, July, and December. He may occasionally skip reinvesting one quarter's dividends, perhaps to take the cash as income or for tax planning purposes, but the pattern is remarkably consistent.

Doggett isn't alone in this approach. MarketDash recently noted that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) reinvests dividends annually in Wells Fargo (WFC) stock, though his frequency is less aggressive.

Why These Stocks Matter

Doggett is building positions in high-yield blue-chip stocks. Here's what these five companies are currently paying out in dividend yields:

• Coca-Cola: 2.9%
• PPG Industries: 2.7%
• Home Depot: 2.7%
• Johnson & Johnson: 2.5%
• International Business Machines: 2.2%

Coca-Cola, Home Depot, and Johnson & Johnson all ranked in the top 10 highest-yielding stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to start 2026.

Performance-wise, it's been a mixed bag. Johnson & Johnson and IBM were among the five best-performing stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2025, posting impressive gains of 43.1% and 39.1% respectively. Home Depot, on the other hand, struggled with an 11.5% loss for the year, ranking just outside the five worst performers in the index.

The Compound Effect

The beauty of Doggett's strategy is its simplicity and patience. By consistently reinvesting dividends in these high-yielding blue-chip stocks, he's accumulating more shares with each purchase. More shares means larger dividend payments next quarter, which means even more shares can be purchased, creating a snowball effect.

This only works, of course, as long as these companies maintain or grow their dividends. But that's the whole point of focusing on established Dow components and century-old companies like PPG. These aren't startups that might pivot to a new business model. They're cash-generating machines with long histories of returning money to shareholders.

It's not flashy. Nobody's going to write a breathless tweet about a congressman buying more Coca-Cola stock with his Coca-Cola dividends. But as a long-term wealth-building strategy, it's hard to argue with the math.