4 ms·

Where are they aggregating all this insider data from? Is there an index of stocks being traded by government insiders and officials that can be tracked in real

Where are they aggregating all this insider data from? Is there an index of stocks being traded by government insiders and officials that can be tracked in real-time?

CameronNemo 6y ago
Real time? No. The legislators have to report their trades a couple months after they make them, IIRC.
- monkeybutton 6y ago
  That's unfortunate; If was real time a copycat investment strategy would work, right?
  - delecti 6y ago
    IIRC, the same law that requires them to report their trades makes it illegal to use that data to profit.
    - weird-eye-issue 6y ago
      There is no way it would be illegal to trade based on their disclosures
  - greenshackle2 6y ago
    tl;dr yes but you would probably get beaten to the punch by high frequency traders, and risk being exploited by the discloser. If you had sneaky exclusive access to their trading flow in real time then yeah sure you could copy them and get the benefits of insider trading. (And you might be guilty of insider trading yourself? I'm not sure how the law works.) If everyone knows Alice is doing insider trading and knows her trades, then when Alice buys X at $10.00, there will probably be other copycats piling into X and driving its price up, so you won't be able to get the same price as Alice, unless you're faster than everyone else. Since you don't know what the actual inside information is, you don't know if it's still worth it to buy at $10.20, $10.30, etc. Maybe the inside info was only slightly better than expected earnings and the price end up being only $10.05. This is somewhat exploitable by Alice, she doesn't need insider information anymore, she just has to buy random stock Z and disclose it, watch copycats pile into Z and drive its price up, then sell it back at a higher price.
- alfl 6y ago
  Scanning the data in the linked article [0], most trades are reported within a week, usually only a few days, some same day. [0]: https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data
weird-eye-issue 6y ago
It talks about that pretty high up on the site that is linked. Just go read it.
ceejayoz 6y ago
> Like the US Senate, elected members in the US House of Representatives must disclose financial activity they or their spouse or their dependent children conduct while in office. These financial disclosures can be found here. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data Looks like the report gets filed shortly after the trade.
sakopov 6y ago
If I had to guess I'd say they're probably using EDGAR - https://www.sec.gov/edgar https://www.sec.gov/edgar
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Take a trip to 1995 and check out what we use in Canada: SEDAR: https://www.sedar.com/ https://www.sedar.com/
dvaun 6y ago
The Office of the Clerk of the House has a page for downloading Zip files of annual data[0]. If you take the DocID from the XML or TXT files in those sets you can send a request to: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/<doctype>-pdfs/<year>/<docid>.pdf - <doctype> works for the values "ptr" and "financial" - <year> self-explanatory - <docid> the DocID from the entries in the XML or TXT files Example: Nancy Pelosi disclosure/filing on 2021-04-09[1] [0]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/FinancialDisclosure https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/Financi... [1]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/2021/20018539.pdf https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/202... This would be fun to play around with. I wonder if there's a better endpoint to source this from?
- adolph 6y ago
  If you are using Python, this is an approach to get PDF tables into Pandas dataframes. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-extract-tables-from-pdf-using-python-pandas-and-tabula-py-c65e43bd754 https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-extract-tables-from-pd...

Where are they aggregating all this insider data from? Is there an index of stocks being traded by government insiders and officials that can be tracked in real-time?

CameronNemo 6y ago

Real time? No. The legislators have to report their trades a couple months after they make them, IIRC.

monkeybutton 6y ago
That's unfortunate; If was real time a copycat investment strategy would work, right?
- delecti 6y ago
  IIRC, the same law that requires them to report their trades makes it illegal to use that data to profit.
  - weird-eye-issue 6y ago
    There is no way it would be illegal to trade based on their disclosures
- greenshackle2 6y ago
  tl;dr yes but you would probably get beaten to the punch by high frequency traders, and risk being exploited by the discloser. If you had sneaky exclusive access to their trading flow in real time then yeah sure you could copy them and get the benefits of insider trading. (And you might be guilty of insider trading yourself? I'm not sure how the law works.) If everyone knows Alice is doing insider trading and knows her trades, then when Alice buys X at $10.00, there will probably be other copycats piling into X and driving its price up, so you won't be able to get the same price as Alice, unless you're faster than everyone else. Since you don't know what the actual inside information is, you don't know if it's still worth it to buy at $10.20, $10.30, etc. Maybe the inside info was only slightly better than expected earnings and the price end up being only $10.05. This is somewhat exploitable by Alice, she doesn't need insider information anymore, she just has to buy random stock Z and disclose it, watch copycats pile into Z and drive its price up, then sell it back at a higher price.
alfl 6y ago
Scanning the data in the linked article [0], most trades are reported within a week, usually only a few days, some same day. [0]: https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data

weird-eye-issue 6y ago

It talks about that pretty high up on the site that is linked. Just go read it.

ceejayoz 6y ago

> Like the US Senate, elected members in the US House of Representatives must disclose financial activity they or their spouse or their dependent children conduct while in office. These financial disclosures can be found here. https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data https://unusualwhales.com/i_am_the_senate/data Looks like the report gets filed shortly after the trade.

sakopov 6y ago

If I had to guess I'd say they're probably using EDGAR - https://www.sec.gov/edgar https://www.sec.gov/edgar

Scoundreller 6y ago
Take a trip to 1995 and check out what we use in Canada: SEDAR: https://www.sedar.com/ https://www.sedar.com/

dvaun 6y ago

The Office of the Clerk of the House has a page for downloading Zip files of annual data[0]. If you take the DocID from the XML or TXT files in those sets you can send a request to: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/<doctype>-pdfs/<year>/<docid>.pdf - <doctype> works for the values "ptr" and "financial" - <year> self-explanatory - <docid> the DocID from the entries in the XML or TXT files Example: Nancy Pelosi disclosure/filing on 2021-04-09[1] [0]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/FinancialDisclosure https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/PublicDisclosure/Financi... [1]: https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/2021/20018539.pdf https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/202... This would be fun to play around with. I wonder if there's a better endpoint to source this from?

adolph 6y ago
If you are using Python, this is an approach to get PDF tables into Pandas dataframes. https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-extract-tables-from-pdf-using-python-pandas-and-tabula-py-c65e43bd754 https://towardsdatascience.com/how-to-extract-tables-from-pd...