Methodology
How Capitol Trader Works
Everything on Capitol Trader is derived from official U.S. government filings. This page explains where the data comes from, how we process it, what the numbers mean, and what they can and cannot tell you.
1. Data Sources
All trade data originates from two official U.S. government disclosure portals:
House of Representatives
House Clerk Financial Disclosures
disclosures.house.gov — Periodic Transaction Reports (PTRs) filed by House members and their spouses.
Senate
Senate Office of Public Records
efts.senate.gov — Electronic Financial Disclosure system for senators and their spouses.
Capitol Trader does not create, modify, or supplement any trade data. We parse these official filings, resolve member identities, normalize field formats, and load the results into a searchable database.
2. Update Frequency
Our pipeline ingests new filings daily. New disclosures are typically available in the Capitol Trader database within 24 hours of being published to the official government portals.
The STOCK Act grants members of Congress up to 45 calendar days from the date of a trade to file their disclosure. This means a trade executed today may not appear in any public database — including ours — for up to 45 days. There is no way to close this gap within the current legal framework.
3. What Gets Reported
The STOCK Act requires members to report:
- →Any purchase, sale, or exchange of a publicly traded security or security future
- →Transactions in securities held by the member, their spouse, or their dependent children
- →Transactions valued over $1,000 in aggregate
- →The date of the transaction, the type, the asset description, and the amount bracket
Mutual funds and diversified investment vehicles are generally excluded from reporting requirements, which means many index fund transactions do not appear in disclosures. What you see in Capitol Trader is primarily individual security transactions.
4. Amount Brackets
Transaction amounts are disclosed in statutory brackets, not as exact figures. The legal brackets are:
| Label | Range |
|---|---|
| $1K–$15K | $1,001 – $15,000 |
| $15K–$50K | $15,001 – $50,000 |
| $50K–$100K | $50,001 – $100,000 |
| $100K–$250K | $100,001 – $250,000 |
| $250K–$500K | $250,001 – $500,000 |
| $500K–$1M | $500,001 – $1,000,000 |
| $1M–$5M | $1,000,001 – $5,000,000 |
| $5M–$25M | $5,000,001 – $25,000,000 |
| $25M+ | Over $25,000,000 |
When Capitol Trader displays an amount, it shows the bracket label from the filing. Exact dollar values cannot be derived from disclosure data.
5. Transaction Types
6. Buy Count / Sell Count
On ticker pages and sector pages, we show aggregate buy count and sell count across all members. These are transaction counts, not dollar amounts:
- ▲Buy count: Total number of purchase transactions disclosed for this ticker across all members and all time periods in the database.
- ▼Sell count: Total number of sale, partial sale, and exchange transactions for this ticker.
A high buy count relative to sell count means more individual transactions were purchases — it does not necessarily mean more dollar volume was purchased, since transaction sizes vary significantly across the amount brackets.
7. Member Profiles
Member biographical data (name, chamber, party, state, committee assignments where available) is sourced from official congressional directories and public records. Photos are sourced from official congressional portrait databases.
Trade count and last trade date shown on member profiles reflect only what is in Capitol Trader's database — which may not include all historical filings, particularly for earlier years when STOCK Act compliance and data availability were less consistent.
8. What This Data Cannot Tell You
- →Motive: Disclosures show what was traded and when — not why. We cannot determine whether a trade was influenced by committee information, personal financial planning, a spouse's independent decision, or any other factor.
- →Exact profit or loss: Without exact amounts and cost basis information, calculating gains or losses from disclosure data alone is not possible.
- →Current holdings: Disclosures are event-based (individual transactions). We do not have a continuous view of a member's full portfolio at any point in time.
- →Insider information: Observing that a member bought a stock before it rose does not establish that they had inside information. Correlation in public records does not prove causation.
9. Data Corrections
We strive for accuracy but errors can occur during parsing and normalization. If you spot a discrepancy between what appears on Capitol Trader and what is in the official government filing, please contact us with the member name, ticker, and date. The official filing is always the authoritative source.