Congressional trading data methodology

Methodology guide for Congressional Trader source coverage, data fields, normalization, corrections, disclosure delay, amount ranges, and estimated-metric limitations.

Open data feed See leaderboard

Direct answer

Congressional Trader converts public House and Senate periodic transaction reports into searchable ticker-mapped rows while preserving ranges, ownership, both dates, filing delay, and the official source. The normalized feed is useful but not a complete substitute for the filing.

Workflow

Step 1

Normalize the public record

Convert public filing rows into consistent lawmaker, ticker, transaction, and date fields.

Feed

Step 2

Preserve uncertainty

Keep value bands and delay fields visible so the app does not imply fake precision.

Read fields

Step 3

Build internal context

Connect the same trade to politician, ticker, state, sector, and related pages.

Resources

Step 4

Separate context from advice

Keep reported facts separate from AI summaries, committee context, and hypothetical performance estimates.

Caveats

App fields used in this guide

These are product field names, included so the guide connects to the actual tracker instead of staying abstract.

Field	App key	Example	How to read it
Lawmaker	politician_name	Nancy Pelosi	The member or covered filer connected to the public disclosure.
Ticker	ticker	NVDA	The normalized public company ticker used for ticker pages and alerts.
Transaction type	transaction_type	purchase	The disclosed action, such as purchase, sale, or partial sale.
Amount range	amount_min / amount_max	$1,001 - $15,000	The reported value band, not an exact position size.
Trade date	transaction_date	2026-05-12	The date the transaction was reported to have occurred.
Filing date	filing_date	2026-05-20	The date the disclosure became public in the filing workflow.
Disclosure delay	disclosure_delay_days	8 days	The gap between the transaction date and the filing date.
Reported owner	owner	SP / JT / DC / Self	The ownership category reported in the source row. A missing value means it was not normalized and must not be guessed.
Committee context	committees	Armed Services	Committee membership used as context, not proof of intent.
Track record	track_record_win_rate	54%	A historical performance context field that should be read with sample size.
Official source	raw_source	House PTR PDF / Senate eFD record	The direct filing reference used to verify the normalized row. The official record controls if the page differs.

What gets normalized

Raw disclosures are useful but inconsistent. The product layer standardizes names, tickers, transaction types, dates, ranges, and source context so users can search and compare filings.

The goal is not to make the data look more exact than it is. The goal is to make public records easier to inspect while keeping uncertainty intact.

Names become politician profiles.
Assets become ticker pages when a normalized ticker is available.
Transaction ranges remain ranges.
Dates stay split into transaction date and filing date.

Duplicates, amendments, missing mappings, and unsupported assets

Repeated rows are preserved when the official filing reports separate accounts or ownership categories. Parser signatures and filing identifiers prevent accidental cross-filing duplication, but the source PDF or Senate record controls the final row count.

Amended filings are reviewed against the earlier record. A correction may change a date, transaction type, owner, asset, or amount band; research should identify the affected field rather than silently merging the versions.

Assets without a reliable public ticker—including many bonds, private companies, trusts, and some derivatives—may not appear in the ticker-oriented feed. Their absence does not mean the filer reported no activity.

Derived performance is hypothetical

Alpha, win rate, price moves, and rankings are calculated research fields rather than official disclosure facts. Values are suppressed below the stated minimum sample, use normalized purchase records, and depend on benchmark and observation-window assumptions.

Public filings report amount bands rather than exact dollars, may omit exact execution prices, and become public after the transaction. Calculations do not represent an investable portfolio and do not include a defensible reconstruction of fees, taxes, slippage, or current holdings.

Freshness and corrections

Data views show their last checked time and official-source links close to the records. A delayed or unparsed source is a coverage limitation, not evidence of no activity.

Report a suspected error to info@moonveil.ai with the page URL and official filing. Confirmed material errors are corrected in the normalized record and documented in affected research under the editorial and corrections policy.

How programmatic pages help quality

Politician, ticker, state, and sector pages reduce thin one-off browsing because each filing sits inside a larger context graph.

That same structure helps SEO: guide pages explain how to read the data, while programmatic pages answer long-tail searches with actual records and internal links.

Official context

Congressional Trader organizes public records for research. Official House and Senate disclosure systems remain the authority for filing rules and source records.

House Committee on Ethics PTR calculatorReviewed for PTR timing, transaction threshold, and House disclosure filing context.Senate Select Committee on Ethics financial disclosure guidanceReviewed for PTR timing, transaction threshold, online access, and Senate disclosure context.

Editorial and corrections policy Report a data issue

FAQ

Why preserve amount ranges?

Public disclosures commonly report value bands. Preserving the band avoids fake precision and keeps the record honest.

Why might a filing have more rows than the ticker feed?

The official filing can include bonds, private companies, trusts, derivatives, scanned asset names, or rows without a reliable ticker mapping. The official source controls the complete record.

Why connect trades to many page types?

The same filing can answer different questions: who traded, which ticker, which state, which sector, and whether future alerts matter.