HOW IT WORKS

How Signal Congress Works — The Best Congress Trade Tool for Investors

Every congress stock trade filed under the STOCK Act passes through a 30-step daily intelligence pipeline that transforms raw government disclosures into ranked anomaly scores, corroboration signals from 8 independent federal data sources, and plain-English ARIA intelligence briefs — surfacing the trades that matter from the 32,000+ in the database.

PHASE 1 — INGESTION
01
INGESTIONHouse Clerk XML Ingest

We pull the official PTR XML index from disclosures-clerk.house.gov daily. Each filing gives us member identity, chamber, disclosure date, and a link to the underlying PDF.

02
INGESTIONSenate eFD Sync

Senate disclosures come from the Senate eFD system. Data is normalized to the same schema so House and Senate signals are directly comparable. Amended filings automatically supersede originals — no duplicate trades.

03
EXTRACTIONPDF Parsing & Enrichment

Each PTR PDF is parsed with a dual-pass extractor: structured table extraction first, then regex fallback on raw text. Produces ticker, transaction type, dollar range, and transaction date.

PHASE 2 — CORROBORATION (steps 4–10)
04
CORROBORATIONCorroboration — 8 Independent Federal Sources

Eight independent federal data sources are cross-referenced against each trade. Each match adds a corroboration badge and increases the trade's anomaly signal weight.

CONTRACT
USASpending.gov
Active federal contracts where the member's committee has oversight
SOL
SAM.gov
Open federal solicitations 30–60 days before contract award
LOBBY
Senate LDA
Active lobbying relationships between the company and the member's office
FEC
FEC EFTS
PAC donations from the company to the member's campaign
REG
Federal Register API
Regulatory actions published near the trade date
INSIDER
SEC EDGAR Form 4
C-suite executives trading in the same direction within 60 days
OGE 278-T
Cabinet officials holding the same ticker (executive convergence)
BIPARTISAN
Internal
Members from both parties trading the same ticker within 30 days
PHASE 3 — SECTOR CLASSIFICATION
11
ENRICHMENTSector Classification

Each ticker is classified using GICS sector data from yFinance. 85.9% of active tickers have sector assignments. Sector data enables committee-relevance scoring and corroboration matching.

PHASE 4 — LEGISLATIVE CALENDAR
12
ANALYTICSLegislative Calendar

Committee meetings, hearings, and bill markups are ingested daily from Congress.gov API v3. Each trade is matched to the nearest committee event for that member's committees. The result: a signed days_to_event value — negative means the trade occurred before an event (positioning), positive means after (reaction).

PHASE 5 — MEMBER BASELINES
13
ANALYTICSMember Behavioral Baselines

Each of 118 active trading members has a 24-month behavioral profile:

  • ·Average trades per month (Rohit Khanna: 233/month — a single trade is not anomalous for him)
  • ·Sector concentration (Susan Collins trades financials 100% of the time — that's her baseline)
  • ·Average disclosure lag (Adam Smith files same-day — fast disclosure is his norm)
  • ·Committee-sector overlap rate
  • ·Average corroboration badges per trade

The baseline is the denominator for anomaly scoring. Without it, every Khanna trade looks like a signal.

PHASE 6 — ANOMALY SCORING
14
SCORINGAnomaly Scoring

Each trade receives an anomaly score (0–100) across five weighted dimensions, multiplied by a committee access factor (1.0–1.6×) based on whether the member's committee has direct oversight of the trade's sector. Committee chairs receive the highest multiplier.

Example: Shelley Capito (Energy Committee Chair) bought Constellation Energy (nuclear power) 3 days before a committee event. She never trades utilities. Anomaly score: 79.1.
PHASE 7 — ARIA INTELLIGENCE
15
INTELLIGENCEARIA Intelligence Briefs

For every trade with anomaly score ≥ 40, ARIA generates a 3–5 sentence intelligence brief using Claude API. Each brief synthesizes what makes this trade anomalous for this specific member, which corroboration sources confirm the signal, the member's baseline context, and the legislative proximity and committee access context.

220 intelligence briefs are currently live in the INTEL tab (PRO subscribers).

PHASE 8 — CONVICTION, CLUSTERING & DELIVERY (steps 16–30)
16
DELIVERYConviction Scoring, Clustering & Delivery

The remaining steps handle: conviction scoring (historical alpha weighting), bipartisan cluster detection, backtest preset refresh, AI summaries, member stats refresh, compliance watch (STOCK Act violation tracking), and daily quality checks across 22 dimensions before the pipeline completes at 07:30 UTC daily.

PHASE 6 DEEP DIVE

Anomaly Score Breakdown

Five dimensions, each scored 0–100, combined into a weighted composite and multiplied by a committee access factor (1.0–1.6×). Minimum data requirements must be met for all dimensions — insufficient data defaults the dimension to 0.

Sector Deviation25%How unusual is this GICS sector relative to the member's 24-month baseline? Measures departure from their established trading pattern.
Legislative Proximity30%Days between trade and nearest committee event for this member. Negative = before event (positioning). Closer and before = higher score.
Disclosure Speed15%Days between transaction and filing vs. member's baseline average. Unusually fast disclosure relative to their own history scores higher.
Corroboration Excess20%Badge count vs. member's average badges per trade. Three badges when the baseline is 0.3 signals unusual external confirmation.
Trade Size10%Dollar amount vs. member's historical median trade size. Trades materially larger than their norm score higher.
Threshold guide:  70+= High anomaly — surfaces in INTEL tab (free tier)  · 40–69= Notable anomaly — surfaces in INTEL tab (PRO)  · <40 = Standard signal
DATA SOURCES

Where the Data Comes From

All primary data is sourced directly from official U.S. government systems. We do not use commercial data vendors for the core trade feed.

SOURCEENDPOINTWHAT IT SIGNALS
House Clerk PTR XMLdisclosures-clerk.house.govAll House PTR filings since 2012
Senate eFD Systemefdsearch.senate.govAll Senate PTR filings since 2012
USASpending.govapi.usaspending.govFederal contract & grant awards (CONTRACT)
SAM.govapi.sam.gov/opportunities/v2Federal solicitations 30–60 days pre-award (SOL)
Senate LDAlda.senate.govLobbying disclosure registrations (LOBBY)
FEC EFTSapi.open.fec.govCampaign finance contributions (FEC)
Federal Registerapi.federalregister.govRegulatory actions and proposed rules (REG)
SEC EDGARefts.sec.gov / data.sec.govCorporate insider Form 4 trades (INSIDER)
OGE 278-Toge.govCabinet official holdings (⚡ convergence)
Congress.govapi.congress.gov/v3Committee meetings, hearings, bill actions
PHASE 8 DEEP DIVE

Bipartisan Cluster Detection Rules

Bipartisan clusters are the highest-confidence signals on the platform. The algorithm applies strict rules to minimize false positives.

Time window30 rolling days
Minimum members4 total (≥2 per party)
Transaction typeBuys only (sells excluded from clustering)
Ticker uniquenessSame underlying equity (options excluded unless underlying matches)
Amendment handlingAmended filings replace originals; no double-counting
COMPLIANCE TRACKING

Late Disclosure Detection

The STOCK Act requires members of Congress to disclose trades within 45 days of the transaction. Our pipeline tracks every filing date against every transaction date and flags members whose late-filing pattern is statistically anomalous — not isolated delays, but a recurring pattern across multiple trades.

SEVERE5+ trades filed more than 90 days late, or a batch of 10+ trades dumped in one filing event after going unreported for over a year.
MAJORLarge-scale batch pattern: 10+ late trades AND a bimodal ratio above 3 — most trades are filed on time, but a concentrated bulk dump dominates the average.
MINOREarly-stage pattern: bimodal ratio above 3 with at least 3 late trades. May escalate with additional filings.

The /late-disclosures page publishes the most severely flagged members and weekly filing statistics — no account required. PRO subscribers get the full Compliance Watch table with all severity tiers, expanded statistics, and sortable columns.

READY TO ACCESS THE INTELLIGENCE LAYER?

See the Intelligence Layer Live

220 ARIA intelligence briefs. 32,289 trades scored. 8 corroboration sources. The most rigorous congressional trade analysis available.

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