Our Methodology
Transparency about our data — where it comes from, how it's processed, and what it means.
1. Data Sources
PublicTradeLens fetches data directly from two free, publicly available APIs:
- House Stock Watcher — Aggregated House STOCK Act disclosures:
house-stock-watcher-data.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/data/all_transactions.json - Senate Stock Watcher — Aggregated Senate STOCK Act disclosures:
senate-stock-watcher-data.s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/aggregate/all_transactions.json
These datasets are compiled from official government disclosure portals by volunteer developers and are made freely available for public use.
2. The Congressional Filing Process
Under the STOCK Act, members of Congress must file a "Periodic Transaction Report" (PTR) within 45 calendar days of any transaction (purchase, sale, or exchange) in an investment exceeding $1,000.
House members file with the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Senators file with the Secretary of the Senate and the Senate Ethics Committee. These reports are publicly accessible at efts.house.gov and efts.senate.gov respectively.
Violations carry a $200 fine — widely criticized as insufficient. More serious violations (trading on actual non-public information) could theoretically constitute securities fraud, though prosecutions are rare.
3. What the Amount Ranges Mean
Congress members are not required to disclose exact trade values — only a dollar range. The ranges reported are:
| Filed Range | Display |
|---|---|
| $1,001 - $15,000 | $1K–$15K |
| $15,001 - $50,000 | $15K–$50K |
| $50,001 - $100,000 | $50K–$100K |
| $100,001 - $250,000 | $100K–$250K |
| $250,001 - $500,000 | $250K–$500K |
| $500,001 - $1,000,000 | $500K–$1M |
| $1,000,001 - $5,000,000 | $1M–$5M |
| Over $50,000,000 | $50M+ |
4. Data Limitations
- Data may be delayed up to 45 days from the actual trade date.
- Some members file late — the disclosure date may differ significantly from the transaction date.
- Not all trades include party affiliation — we display "Unknown" when not available.
- Trades by family members of Congress members (spouses, dependents) are included in disclosures but may not reflect the member's own decisions.
- The "owner" field in filings can be "Self", "Spouse", "Child", or "Joint". We display all.
- Some ticker symbols may be missing or listed as "--" for certain asset types (real estate, bonds).
5. Our Processing
Data is fetched client-side on page load and cached for one hour to avoid excessive API calls. We normalize trade types (purchase/sale → Buy/Sell), generate politician profile slugs, and deduplicate entries where possible. We do not modify, filter, or selectively omit any official trade disclosures.