Congressional Trading Signals — STOCK Act Intelligence

The fastest way to discover unusual congressional trading activity from official STOCK Act disclosures. This actor doesn't just return filings — it parses the House PDFs into individual transactions and turns them into signals: clusters, late disclosures, new positions, committee-linked activity, behaviour changes, and emerging congressional consensus. Official House and Senate data only. No AI, no third-party datasets.

Under the STOCK Act of 2012, every member of Congress must publicly disclose stock transactions over $1,000 within 45 days. This actor collects, extracts, and analyses those filings so you get the signal, not 300 PDFs.

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Detect signals like

Congressional accumulation — "PLTR accumulated: 9 purchases vs 1 sale across 6 members"

Trade cluster — "4 members bought NVDA within 12 days"

New position — "Jane Doe opened a new position in NVDA"

Behaviour change — "David Taylor made 12 trades in the last 30 days vs a ~1.8/month baseline"

Late disclosure — "AMZN disclosed 436 days after the transaction date"

Each is a structured, deterministic record your dashboard or automation can branch on — no prose parsing. The examples above are real signals generated from actual House filings.

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Congressional Consensus Score

A deterministic 0-100 measure of congressional interest in a stock:

0   = little congressional activity
50  = moderate interest
100 = broad congressional accumulation

Derived from unique buyers, buy/sell ratio, new positions, and activity velocity — no market data required. It rides on every tickerSummary record (includeAggregates: true), which the actor sorts highest-consensus first.

{ "ticker": "NVDA", "consensusScore": 92, "purchaseCount": 9, "saleCount": 1, "memberCount": 6 }

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Example investigation

Input:  { "tickers": ["NVDA"], "includeAggregates": true, "includeEvents": true }

Output:
  tickerSummary  NVDA — 9 purchases, 0 sales, 6 members, consensusScore 92
  event          trade_cluster — 4 members bought NVDA within 12 days
  event          new_position  — 2 members opened a first-time NVDA position
  → Congressional accumulation signal generated.

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Questions this actor answers

Can I detect unusual congressional trading activity before it becomes a headline? Yes — set includeEvents: true and watch for trade_cluster, congressional_accumulation, behavior_change, and new_position.

Can I detect when Congress starts accumulating a stock? Yes — filter eventType = congressional_accumulation, or read tickerSummary.consensusScore.

Can I identify unusually late disclosures? Yes — set lateFilingsOnly: true, or read complianceStatus / the severely_late_filing event.

Can I find committee members trading companies in their oversight area? Yes — supply a committeeData map and enable committee_activity events.

Can I detect when a member opens a brand-new position? Yes — run in watchlist mode (watchlistName) with includeEvents: true; watch for new_position / position_exit.

Can I spot a member whose trading suddenly spikes? Yes — the behavior_change event fires when a member's recent rate runs well above their baseline.

Can I rank members by disclosure timeliness, or stocks by congressional interest? Yes — includeAggregates: true gives memberSummary.lateFilingRate and tickerSummary.consensusScore / momentum.

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Why people switch

A raw congressional-trades CSV leaves you to download filings → parse PDFs → normalize amounts → calculate compliance → detect patterns → build alerts yourself. This actor already did that. You get trade, event, and summary records — not a folder of PDFs.

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Why this is different

Most congressional-trading tools return filings. This actor returns:

• ✓ Parsed transactions (ticker, side, amount, dates) — not PDF links
• ✓ STOCK Act compliance analysis (on-time / late / severely-late)
• ✓ Alert-ready signals + importance scores
• ✓ Trading clusters & congressional consensus scores
• ✓ New-position / position-exit detection (cross-run)
• ✓ Committee-linked activity (your roster)
• ✓ Behaviour-change & momentum detection
• ✓ Journalist-ready headlines

No AI required. No third-party datasets required. Only official government disclosures.

Capability	Generic tracker	This actor
Filing links	✓	✓
Parsed transactions	sometimes	✓
STOCK Act compliance scoring	rare	✓
New-position / exit detection	✗	✓
Trade clusters	✗	✓
Congressional consensus score	✗	✓
Behaviour-change detection	✗	✓
Committee-activity detection	✗	✓
Automation-ready event types	partial	✓

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Common use cases

• Detect unusual congressional trading activity — behavior_change, trade_cluster, congressional_accumulation events.
• Find late disclosures — lateFilingsOnly: true, severely_late_filing events, memberSummary.lateFilingRate.
• Monitor congressional accumulation — sort tickerSummary by consensusScore.
• Track committee-linked trading — supply committeeData, enable committee_activity events.
• Build automated alerts — branch on eventType / alertPriority / complianceStatus in Slack, Dify, Zapier, or Make.
• Research congressional trading trends — trend records + structured per-transaction history.

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What you get from one call

• Real transactions, not just filing links. Each House PTR PDF is parsed into its individual trades — ticker, asset name, asset type, purchase/sale/exchange, transaction date, amount range, and owner.
• STOCK Act compliance signal. Every trade carries a compliance block: days between the trade and its disclosure, the 45-day deadline, and a status of on-time, late, or severely-late. Late filings are the headline finding for journalists and watchdogs.
• Estimated dollar volume. Amount ranges are parsed to amountMin / amountMax / amountMidpoint so you can sort, sum, and rank by size.
• Run-level summary record. A single aggregate row (also mirrored to the key-value store SUMMARY) with total trades, buys vs sells, estimated volume, late-filing rate, top tickers, and most-active members.
• Filterable signal tags + alert priority + importance score. Each trade carries deterministic signalTags (late-filing, large-trade, spouse-trade, stock/option/etf/crypto-related, new-trade), an alertPriority of high / medium / low, and an importanceScore (0-100, sortable; filter with minImportanceScore) — branch on them in Slack/Zapier/Dify without parsing prose.
• Aggregate & trend records (opt-in). Turn on includeAggregates for one tickerSummary per ticker (buyers, sellers, buy/sell ratio, volume, a 0-100 consensusScore, and momentum/velocity) and one memberSummary per member (trade count, late-filing rate, average size, trading style, favorite tickers & sectors) — the "favorite stocks" and "most active members" answers as flat BI rows. Turn on includeTrends for per-ticker weekly/monthly trend records.
• Event records — "why it matters" (opt-in). Turn on includeEvents for deterministic event records: large_purchase/large_sale, late_filing/severely_late_filing, trade_cluster (3+ members buying one ticker within 30 days), congressional_accumulation, new_position/position_exit (watchlist mode), committee_activity (with committeeData), and behavior_change (a member's trading rate spiking above their baseline). Each carries a plain-English reason. This is the layer most trackers don't expose.
• Story records (opt-in). Turn on includeStories for templated journalist headlines composed from the strongest events — "4 Energy Committee members traded XOM," "Tim Walberg disclosed an AMZN trade 436 days late." Deterministic templates, no LLM, paste-ready.
• Sector classification + committee enrichment. Trades carry sector/industry from a curated map (NVDA → Technology / Semiconductors), and committeeMemberships when you supply a committeeData map — so you can ask "Energy Committee members buying oil stocks?" null/empty when not covered — never guessed.
• Audit-grade provenance. Every record carries a provenance block: source system, retrieval timestamp, parser version, parse confidence, and the SHA-256 hash of the source PDF.
• Cross-run monitoring. Set a watchlistName and each record is tagged NEW or UNCHANGED versus prior runs — ideal for scheduled daily or weekly tracking.

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Key features

• Per-transaction House extraction — parses the official PTR PDFs (digitally filed reports) into structured trades, not placeholder rows
• STOCK Act timeliness scoring — deterministic on-time / late / severely-late status per trade from the disclosed dates
• Signal tags & alert priority — deterministic, filterable flags derived only from the disclosed data (no market interpretation)
• Dual-chamber coverage — House and Senate disclosures in a single run
• Official government sources only — disclosures-clerk.house.gov and efdsearch.senate.gov, no third-party intermediaries
• Precise multi-value filters — filter by lists of tickers, members, or states; by side; by minimum trade size; or by late filings only
• Date-range control — fromDate/toDate on either the transaction date or the disclosure date
• Provenance & audit artifacts — parse confidence + PDF hash on every record; optional original-PDF / raw-text storage
• Aggregate intelligence — top tickers, most-active members, estimated volume, late-filing rate, and large-trade count per run
• Watchlist mode — opt-in cross-run change detection (NEW / UNCHANGED) for scheduled monitoring, with a newOnly alert filter

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How to use

Using Apify Console

1. Open Congressional Trading Signals on the Apify Store.
2. Click Try for free.
3. Configure the input — or leave the defaults to pull the latest 90 days of House trades.
4. Click Start.
5. View results in the Dataset tab (the Trades view leads with the buy/sell side and ticker). Export as JSON, CSV, Excel, or push to Google Sheets.

Using the API

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/CkxfuZrYkYFMctI4R/runs" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "member": "Gottheimer",
    "chamber": "house",
    "daysBack": 120,
    "maxResults": 100
  }'

Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your token from the Integrations page.

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Input parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
members	Array	(empty)	Congress members to search (e.g. ["Pelosi", "Tuberville"]). Partial match. Empty = all.
tickers	Array	(empty)	Filter House trades by extracted ticker (e.g. ["NVDA", "AAPL"]).
states	Array	(empty)	Two-letter state codes to filter by (House records).
chamber	String	both	both, house, or senate.
transactionType	String	both	both, purchase, sale, or exchange — matched against the real extracted side.
daysBack	Integer	90	How many days back to fetch filings. 1–730.
fromDate / toDate	String	(empty)	Optional YYYY-MM-DD bounds applied to dateBasis.
dateBasis	String	disclosureDate	Which date fromDate/toDate filter on: disclosureDate or transactionDate.
minAmountMidpoint	Integer	0	Only return trades whose disclosed amount midpoint is at least this value.
minImportanceScore	Integer	0	Only return trades with importanceScore (0-100) at least this value.
lateFilingsOnly	Boolean	false	Return only trades disclosed outside the STOCK Act 45-day window.
newOnly	Boolean	false	Watchlist mode only: emit only filings not seen in prior runs.
watchlistName	String	(empty)	Set to enable cross-run NEW / UNCHANGED tagging (+ firstSeenAt/lastSeenAt).
includeAggregates	Boolean	false	Emit tickerSummary + memberSummary records. Not charged.
includeTrends	Boolean	false	Emit per-ticker trend records. Not charged.
includeEvents	Boolean	false	Emit event records (large/late/cluster/accumulation/new-position/committee). Not charged.
includeStories	Boolean	false	Emit templated journalist story records. Not charged.
committeeData	Object	(empty)	Your member→committees map for committeeMemberships + committee_activity events.
trendBucket	String	week	week (ISO) or month for trend records.
maxResults	Integer	50	Max records returned. House PDFs are parsed newest-first; higher values parse more filings.
outputProfile	String	full	full, minimal, dashboard (BI columns), or monitoring (automation columns).
saveSourcePdfs / saveRawText	Boolean	false	Store the source PDF / extracted text to the key-value store for audit.
proxyConfiguration	Object	(residential prefill)	Enable a residential proxy to include Senate data reliably. House needs no proxy.
member / ticker	String	(empty)	Legacy single-value aliases for members / tickers.

Example input

{
  "tickers": ["NVDA", "MSFT"],
  "chamber": "house",
  "transactionType": "purchase",
  "minAmountMidpoint": 50000,
  "daysBack": 365,
  "maxResults": 200
}

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Output

Each trade record is a single disclosed transaction. Example (House):

{
  "recordType": "trade",
  "schemaVersion": "2.5.0",
  "eventId": "txn_87720b12d1dd9271",
  "member": "Lloyd Doggett",
  "chamber": "House",
  "state": "TX",
  "district": "37",
  "ticker": "PG",
  "assetDescription": "Procter & Gamble Company",
  "assetType": "ST",
  "transactionSide": "PURCHASE",
  "transactionDate": "05/15/2026",
  "disclosureDate": "6/4/2026",
  "amount": "$1,001 - $15,000",
  "amountMin": 1001,
  "amountMax": 15000,
  "amountMidpoint": 8001,
  "owner": "",
  "compliance": { "daysToDisclose": 20, "filingDeadlineDays": 45, "status": "on-time", "daysLate": 0 },
  "complianceStatus": "on-time",
  "complianceDaysLate": 0,
  "signalTags": ["stock"],
  "alertPriority": "low",
  "importanceScore": 42,
  "filingUrl": "https://disclosures-clerk.house.gov/public_disc/ptr-pdfs/2026/20034712.pdf",
  "docId": "20034712",
  "extractionStatus": "parsed",
  "provenance": { "sourceSystem": "house_clerk", "retrievedAt": "2026-06-06T16:34:05Z", "parserVersion": "2.1.0", "parseConfidence": 1, "pdfSha256": "13b3a8..." },
  "summary": "Lloyd Doggett (House) bought PG ($1,001 - $15,000) on 05/15/2026; disclosed 6/4/2026."
}

The final record of every run is a summary (also pinned to the SUMMARY key-value store record):

{
  "recordType": "summary",
  "totalTrades": 14,
  "purchases": 11,
  "sales": 3,
  "totalEstimatedVolumeUsd": 2330014,
  "lateFilingCount": 0,
  "lateFilingRate": 0,
  "topTickers": [{ "ticker": "MSFT", "count": 4, "estimatedVolumeUsd": 2250004 }],
  "mostActiveMembers": [{ "member": "Josh Gottheimer", "chamber": "House", "count": 12 }],
  "summary": "14 congressional trades (11 buys, 3 sells) worth ~$2,330,014 estimated; 0 disclosed late."
}

With includeAggregates: true you also get one tickerSummary per ticker and one memberSummary per member:

{ "recordType": "tickerSummary", "ticker": "NVDA", "purchaseCount": 9, "saleCount": 1, "memberCount": 6, "buySellRatio": 9, "consensusScore": 84, "momentum": { "last30dPurchases": 7, "prior30dPurchases": 2, "changePct": 250, "velocityRatio": 4.3 }, "estimatedVolumeUsd": 1250000, "lateFilingCount": 0 }
{ "recordType": "memberSummary", "member": "Tim Walberg", "tradeCount": 15, "purchaseCount": 13, "saleCount": 2, "lateFilingRate": 0.93, "tradingStyle": "active", "favoriteTickers": ["FSSL"], "favoriteSectors": ["Financials"], "topTicker": "FSSL" }

With includeTrends: true, per-ticker time buckets:

{ "recordType": "trend", "ticker": "AAPL", "period": "2025-02", "bucket": "month", "purchaseCount": 1, "saleCount": 0, "tradeCount": 1, "estimatedVolumeUsd": 32501 }

With includeEvents: true, deterministic "why it matters" records (10 eventType values; a representative few):

{ "recordType": "event", "eventType": "congressional_accumulation", "ticker": "PLTR", "purchaseCount": 9, "saleCount": 1, "buySellRatio": 9, "reason": "PLTR accumulated: 9 purchases vs 1 sales across 6 members" }
{ "recordType": "event", "eventType": "new_position", "ticker": "NVDA", "member": "Jane Doe", "reason": "Jane Doe opened a new position in NVDA" }
{ "recordType": "event", "eventType": "committee_activity", "committee": "Energy and Commerce", "ticker": "XOM", "memberCount": 4, "reason": "4 Energy and Commerce Committee members traded XOM" }
{ "recordType": "event", "eventType": "behavior_change", "member": "David J. Taylor", "purchaseCount": 12, "reason": "David J. Taylor made 12 trades in the last 30 days vs a ~1.8/month baseline" }

With includeStories: true, one templated journalist headline per top event:

{ "recordType": "story", "headline": "4 Energy and Commerce Committee members traded XOM", "category": "committee-cluster", "ticker": "XOM", "committee": "Energy and Commerce", "memberCount": 4 }

Output fields

Field	Description
recordType	trade, filing, tickerSummary, memberSummary, trend, event, story, summary, or error.
eventId	Stable hash identifying the transaction across runs (for dedup / watchlists).
member / chamber / state / district	Who filed and where.
ticker	Extracted stock ticker (House trades).
assetDescription / assetType	Asset name and the House asset-type code (e.g. ST = stock).
transactionSide	PURCHASE, SALE, PARTIAL_SALE, EXCHANGE, or UNKNOWN.
transactionDate	Date the trade occurred.
disclosureDate	Date the filing was submitted.
amount / amountMin / amountMax / amountMidpoint	Disclosed dollar range, parsed to numbers.
owner	Spouse / Dependent Child / Joint when disclosed (blank = the member).
sector / industry	Curated classification for the ticker (e.g. Technology / Semiconductors). null when not in the curated map.
committeeMemberships	Member's committees (when committeeData supplied; empty array otherwise).
compliance	{ daysToDisclose, filingDeadlineDays: 45, status, daysLate } — STOCK Act timeliness.
complianceStatus / complianceDaysLate	Flattened compliance fields for spreadsheet filtering.
signalTags	Deterministic tags: late-filing, large-trade, spouse-trade, family-trade, stock, option, etf, crypto-related, new-trade.
alertPriority	high (large AND late, or severely-late) / medium / low.
importanceScore	Deterministic 0-100 from size + lateness + asset/owner flags + recency. Sortable; filter with minImportanceScore.
provenance	{ sourceSystem, retrievedAt, parserVersion, parseConfidence (0-1), pdfSha256 }.
filingUrl / docId	Link to the original PDF/report and its document ID.
extractionStatus	parsed, parsed-no-transactions, scanned-no-text, or metadata-only.
sourcePdfKey / rawTextKey	KV keys for the stored source PDF / text (when saveSourcePdfs / saveRawText enabled).
summary	One-line plain-English description of the trade.
changeFlag	NEW / UNCHANGED (watchlist mode only).

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How it works

1. House filing index — download the House Clerk annual XML feed and select PTR filings (types P and X) in your window.
2. Per-transaction extraction — fetch each PTR PDF, read its text layer, and parse the individual transactions (ticker, side, dates, amount, owner). Newest filings are parsed first; the parse count scales with maxResults.
3. Senate filings — query the Senate EFD portal and return filing-level metadata + a link to each report.
4. Compliance + amounts + signals — compute days-to-disclose against the 45-day deadline, parse each dollar range to min/max/midpoint, and derive the signal tags + alert priority.
5. Filter, sort, summarize — apply the member/ticker/state/side/amount/date filters, stream newest-first, and emit a run-level aggregate summary.

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Use in Dify

Drop this actor into Dify workflows via the Apify plugin's Run Actor node. Each trade returns parsed, classified, and compliance-scored as structured JSON — transactionSide (PURCHASE / SALE / EXCHANGE) and compliance.status (on-time / late / severely-late) plus the recordType discriminator your downstream node branches on. A generic scraper pointed at the disclosure portals returns PDF links; this returns decisions.

• Actor ID: ryanclinton/congress-stock-tracker
• Sample input (monitor a member's recent purchases for late filings):

{
  "member": "Gottheimer",
  "chamber": "house",
  "transactionType": "purchase",
  "daysBack": 90,
  "watchlistName": "gottheimer-watch"
}

A Dify if/else node branches cleanly on the stable enums — no prose parsing:

• recordType == "trade" → process the transaction; recordType == "event" → route the signal by eventType (e.g. trade_cluster → notify); recordType == "summary" → read the run aggregate; recordType == "error" → alert.
• compliance.status == "late" OR compliance.status == "severely-late" → STOCK Act late-filing alert.
• transactionSide == "PURCHASE" → buy-signal branch; transactionSide == "SALE" → sell-signal branch.
• importanceScore >= 75 OR alertPriority == "high" → high-priority queue.
• In watchlist mode, changeFlag == "NEW" → act only on filings not seen in prior runs.

The run-level summary record (top tickers, most-active members, estimated volume, late-filing rate) is usable verbatim in a notification or digest node — no LLM rewriting needed.

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Limitations

• Senate is filing-level. The Senate EFD portal restricts automated access and gates per-transaction detail behind a session. Senate records return filing metadata plus a link to the official report; enable proxyConfiguration (residential) to reach the portal reliably.
• Scanned House filings. A small number of older PTRs are scanned images with no text layer. These return a filing record (extractionStatus: scanned-no-text) with the PDF link rather than parsed transactions.
• Party affiliation is not published in either source feed; the party field is reserved.
• Disclosure lag. Filings appear in government systems 1–2 business days after submission; this actor returns whatever is published at run time.

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Responsible use

• Public government data. All filings are legally required public disclosures under the STOCK Act. No private data is collected.
• Respect government servers. Daily or hourly scheduling is reasonable; avoid per-minute runs.
• Not investment advice. Congressional disclosure data is informational. The actor reports trades and disclosure timeliness; it does not predict prices or recommend positions.
• Verify before publishing. Always check findings against the original filing linked in each record.

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FAQ

Q: Does this return the actual trades or just links? A: Actual trades for the House — each PTR PDF is parsed into individual transactions with ticker, side, amount, and dates. Senate records are filing-level (metadata + report link) because the Senate portal gates transaction detail behind a session.

Q: What is the compliance block? A: The STOCK Act requires disclosure within 45 days of a trade. compliance reports daysToDisclose and a status of on-time, late, or severely-late, computed deterministically from the disclosed dates.

Q: How does the ticker filter work now? A: It matches the real extracted ticker on House trades, so ticker: "AAPL" returns only Apple transactions. Senate filing-level rows (which carry no extracted ticker) are kept so you don't lose Senate coverage.

Q: Why are some records filing instead of trade? A: When a PTR is a scanned image with no text layer, or a Senate report, the actor returns a filing record with the link instead of fabricating transaction detail. The extractionStatus field tells you why.

Q: How do I monitor new trades over time? A: Set a watchlistName and schedule the actor. Each record is tagged NEW or UNCHANGED versus prior runs on that watchlist, so you only act on genuinely new filings.

Q: What is the STOCK Act? A: The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 requires members of Congress to publicly disclose financial transactions over $1,000 within 45 days.

Q: How is this different from the SEC Insider Trading actor? A: This tracks trades by members of Congress (STOCK Act PTRs). The SEC Insider Trading actor tracks SEC Form 4 filings by corporate insiders — different people, different framework.

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Related actors

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SEC Insider Trading	SEC Form 4 trades by corporate officers, directors, and major shareholders.
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FEC Campaign Finance Search	Federal Election Commission contributions, expenditures, and committee filings.
Federal Register Search	Proposed rules, final rules, executive orders, and agency notices.