Methodology

Congressional trading data methodology

Methodology guide for Congressional Trader data fields, normalization, notable trade signals, disclosure delay, amount ranges, and interpretation limits.

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Direct answer

Congressional Trader treats public disclosures as structured research records: normalize the lawmaker and ticker, preserve amount ranges, expose filing delay, connect pages through politician/ticker/state/sector routes, and keep interpretation caveats visible.

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

Use AI and notable flags for triage, while keeping legal and investment caveats explicit.

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.
Notable flag	is_notable	true	A product signal used to surface large, fast-filed, repeated, or context-heavy trades.
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.

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.

What notable means

A notable flag is a product triage signal. It can reflect size, delay, repetition, cluster behavior, committee context, or other research context.

It should not be treated as a recommendation, legal conclusion, or proof that a trade will outperform.

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.

FAQ

Why preserve amount ranges?

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

What does a notable trade mean?

It means the trade deserves extra review based on product signals. It does not mean buy, sell, or proof of wrongdoing.

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.