Methodology

How the data is gathered, and what it can and cannot tell you

Everything GetSignal publishes starts as a public filing. This page sets out which filings we read, where we get them, what we calculate ourselves, how current the data is, and the limits that come with each dataset. If a figure on this site is ours rather than the filer's, it is defined here.

What we read

Corporate insider trades. SEC Form 4, filed by officers, directors and ten percent owners. Since Sarbanes-Oxley these are due within two business days of the transaction.
Congressional trades. Periodic transaction reports filed under the STOCK Act by members of the House and Senate.
Institutional holdings. Form 13F, filed quarterly by institutional managers over the reporting threshold, plus Schedule 13D and 13G positions.
Earnings and analyst activity. Reported results against consensus estimates, ratings changes and price targets set by third-party analysts.
Reporting. Where we show a news story we name the outlet and link out. We publish from a short list of named wire services and financial newsrooms and we do not paraphrase their reporting in our own voice.

Where it comes from

Every record here originates in a public filing: SEC EDGAR for Form 4, 13F and Schedule 13D and 13G, and the House and Senate disclosure systems for STOCK Act reports. We read EDGAR directly to confirm records and to link each one back to the original document, and we license market data from institutional providers. Prices may be delayed.

A data provider is a convenience, not an authority. Where the filing itself is the record, we link to it so you can check us.

What we calculate

Two numbers on this site are ours rather than the filer's, and both are defined here so you can judge them.

Disclosure lag. The number of calendar days between the date a transaction took place and the date it was disclosed to the public. We compute it per filing and average it per person. It is a measurement of the filing, not a judgement about the filer: a long lag is often lawful, and the legal deadlines differ by filing type.
Importance. An internal score used to decide what is worth an alert. It weighs the size of a transaction against the filer's own history and the liquidity of the security. It ranks disclosures for your attention. It is not a rating of a security, not a prediction, and not advice.

Estimated net worth

Some member pages carry an estimated net worth. It is the one figure on those pages that nobody filed. No member of Congress discloses a net worth and no filing contains this number: it is the output of a model we license, and it is neither our measurement nor the filer's. We show it because it gives scale to the holdings printed beside it, and we label it as an estimate everywhere it appears.

What it is built from. Congressional financial disclosure reports every asset and liability in a band rather than an amount. The model takes a value within each band, marks the stock holdings it tracks to the latest price we hold, and nets the liabilities. It reaches exactly as far as the disclosures reach and no further.
Why it moves with the market. The tracked stock holdings inside the figure are carried at the latest price rather than at the value written on the filing, so an estimate can change on a day when nothing was filed and nothing was traded. Where we track no holdings for a member, nothing in the figure follows a market and it changes only when a new disclosure arrives.
What it leaves out. Anything a filer is not required to report is not in it, and a personal residence and the federal salary are not on the disclosure at all. It is not a personal balance sheet, it is not audited, and it is not a statement of what anyone is worth.
How wrong it can be. The largest band on a disclosure is open ended, so for a member with large holdings in it the estimate can miss by a wide margin. Member pages print two significant figures for that reason: about $3.1 million rather than $3,091,000. Read it as an order of magnitude, not as a measurement.
How current it is. It carries the date of the snapshot the page was built from, which every member page prints at the foot. The filings behind it are annual and periodic, so the disclosed part of the estimate changes only when a new report is filed, while the priced part changes with the market.

It is never read off a disclosure, and it should not be quoted as a statement of what a named person is worth.

How current it is

The app is updated continuously through the trading day, and alerts fire within minutes of a filing reaching us. Pages on this website are built from a snapshot and each one carries the date of that snapshot. If you need the live picture, that is what the app is for.

Known limits

Every dataset here has a shape you should know about before you read anything into it.

STOCK Act filings are late by design and imprecise by design.Members report within a window measured in weeks, not days, and they disclose value ranges rather than exact amounts. A trade you see today may be over a month old, and "$1,001 to $15,000" is the filing, not our rounding.
13F is a quarter behind and shows only part of the picture.It is filed 45 days after quarter end, so a position may have been sold before you ever see it. It covers long US-listed holdings and does not show short positions, cash, or most non-US assets.
Not every Form 4 is a decision. Awards, option exercises, gifts and shares withheld to cover tax all file on the same form as an open-market purchase or sale. We separate them, and we only treat open-market transactions as buying and selling.
Filings get amended. Corrections and restatements are normal. When an amendment supersedes a record we follow it, which means a figure can legitimately change after it was first published.
Analyst ratings are third-party opinions. Price targets belong to the firm that issued them. They are not ours and we do not endorse them.
Disclosure is not causation. Nothing here establishes that anyone knew anything, and we do not present it as though it does.

Corrections

If something looks wrong, tell us at [email protected] with a link to the page. We check the claim against the primary filing and correct it at the source, so the fix reaches the app and this site together. See contact.

GetSignal is information, not investment advice. See about for who publishes this and terms for the legal position.