Researching Congressional and Executive Trades on Signal8

The short version

Members of Congress, and many senior executive-branch officials, must publicly report their securities trades. Signal8 collects those reports and organizes them on the politicians pages: a list area with leaderboards and an all-trades table, and a detail page for each politician with their trade history, estimated positions and campaign finance.

Two facts shape how to read everything here. First, disclosures report past trades, and can be filed weeks after the trade happened. Second, the law requires trade amounts to be reported in ranges (for example $1,001 to $15,000), not exact figures, so every dollar figure Signal8 shows for a politician, including volume and profit and loss, is an estimate built from those ranges.

Where the data comes from

• Congress. Periodic transaction reports filed under the STOCK Act by senators and representatives. The STOCK Act gives members 45 days to report a trade, and Signal8 flags reports filed later than that.
• Executive branch. Periodic transaction reports on OGE Form 278-T filed by covered officials, shown on pages whose address starts with exec-.
• Campaign finance. Contribution records from the Federal Election Commission.

These are different from corporate insider reports. An executive of a public company reports trades in that company on Form 4, usually within two business days and with exact share counts and prices. A congressional report covers any security, uses ranges, and has a much longer deadline.

The politicians list pages

The list area has these tabs:

The Directory columns are Name, Party, State, Transactions, Last Transaction and Est. PnL. The Conflicts tab shows every visitor the whole leaderboard; only the dollar figures are gated behind a free account.

A politician's detail page

Each politician has a page with a left sidebar and tabs on the right.

The sidebar

Members of Congress show Party, State, Chamber and Committees; executive officials show Title and Agency. Both show trading statistics: Total Trades, Est. Volume, Est. PnL, Win Rate and Last Trade. The dollar figures need a free account.

The tabs

• Overview. Recent activity, estimated top holdings, committee assignments and roles, sector breakdown, and policy event overlap.
• Trades. An estimated positions and trading P&L card, asset mix, sector exposure, and the Trading History table.
• Campaign Finance. Cycle totals, itemized donors, outside groups, affiliated transfers, and donor-to-trade overlap.

The Trading History table has these columns:

An owner filter separates trades by Self, Spouse, Joint and Dependent Child, because reports cover family members' accounts as well. Any trade whose Delay exceeds 45 days is marked late.

How the P&L estimates are built

Signal8 converts each reported range to a value, uses historical prices to estimate a share count, then matches buys and sells first-in, first-out per ticker. Open positions are marked to the current price for unrealized P&L. The tooltip on the page states plainly that actual values may differ significantly.

That spread is why Est. PnL and Win Rate are useful for comparing patterns across politicians and much weaker as a measure of any single trade.

Policy event overlap

The policy overlap views, on the Overview tabs and on the separate policy trades leaderboard, match trades to executive orders signed shortly afterwards that affect the same sector. A match is sector-level co-occurrence: the politician traded a stock in a sector an order affects, within a window of its signing. Sector matches are broad and many will happen by chance. A match is a starting point for research, never evidence that anyone knew about the order in advance.

How to use the politician pages on Signal8

• Browse the politicians list, or open the policy trades leaderboard.
• On any company page, the Congressional Holders card and politician trades show disclosures that name that ticker, for example on AAPL.
• Politician trades are also an alert category, and the Discord channels include congressional and executive trade channels.

FAQ

How long do members of Congress have to report a stock trade?

Under the STOCK Act, a member generally has 45 days from the trade to file a periodic transaction report. Signal8 shows the gap as the Delay column on each trade and marks a trade as late when the delay exceeds 45 days. The Trades list tab also has a STOCK Act Late Filers panel covering the last 180 days.

Why are politicians' trade amounts shown as ranges?

The disclosure forms ask for the value of each transaction in a bracket, such as $1,001 to $15,000 or $15,001 to $50,000, rather than an exact figure. Signal8 shows the range as filed in the Amount column and uses the midpoint only when it has to compute an estimate, such as estimated volume or P&L.

How accurate is the estimated P&L for a politician?

It is an estimate, and for a single trade it can be far off. It is built from range midpoints converted to shares at historical prices, then matched first-in, first-out. Signal8's Conflicts methodology notes that totals can differ by roughly 25% to 40% per trade. It is better for comparing patterns than for measuring one trade.

Does Signal8 cover executive-branch officials as well as Congress?

Yes, for officials who file periodic transaction reports on OGE Form 278-T. Their pages show title and agency instead of party and chamber, and use the same trade table and estimates. Reports that list only bonds or funds without a ticker cannot be matched to a stock.