SenateTrades is a free service that tracks the equity trading activity of US senators and sends automated alerts whenever a particularly interesting trade occurs.
Throughout 2022, a Republican Senator representing Alabama has accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in a small e-commerce company. A few weeks after all of these trades settled, this company announced it was being acquired in a deal that would increase its stock value by 50% in a matter of minutes, making a representative of one of the poorest states in the nation more money than nearly all of his constituents make in a year. Sure, you could chalk these returns up to luck, but this isn't an isolated incident. Senators from all over the nation are consistently making trades in the stock market, and many of these appear to have possibly been made upon material information - something we at SenateTrades think is fundamentally wrong, and unfair to constituents.
SenateTrades is a service for investors and politically-minded people who think it’s unfair for US congress members to solely reap the benefits of stock trading with political connections. Any time a senator makes a particularly interesting trade, our service automatically sends a detailed and digestible email newsletter once the trade is published. These alerts are also published to our Twitter, and archived in our Dashboard.
This allows users to easily gain insight into what their senators are buying, without being overwhelmed by a mountain of financial information. This kickstarts you to perform further research, stay politically informed, sharpen your understanding of financial markets, or even make the trade yourself. At SenateTrades, we think its time for you to get a piece of the pie for yourself.
This project tracks stock market trading activity of US senators by scraping the SEC EDGAR Insider Trading Disclosures List multiple times each hour for the most up-to-date information, and looks for any and all trades published that day. A particularly interesting trade is defined as any purchase of common stock where:
- The company is small (market cap <$2B)
- The purchase is worth over $100,000, regardless of company size
- The company is medium sized (market cap between $2B and $10B), and the purchase is worth at least $50,000
Email alerts are meant to provide you with as much helpful information as possible - while still remaining digestible. These also contain helpful links to continue your research and stay politically active, including:
- A link to the stock's Yahoo! Finance page embedded in the ticker in the header
- Up to 3 of the most recent and relevant news articles about the company
- A link to the contact page of the senator who made the trade
- A link to our Dashboard
Here is a sample of an email alert
And a tweet!
Full performance data can be found on our Dashboard
Credit to Jie Jenn for his tutorials on how to use the Gmail API service, as well as the Google Sheets API. Code from these tutorials is utilized in this project and helped greatly. Source code can be found here.
The NewsAPI service was used to find and aggregate news articles relevant to each trade.
This project began as a side-project by students at Lehigh University, and none of the information SenateTrades provides is investment advice. The primary purpose of this service is to keep users informed on the actions of their representatives, and to aid them in their own investment research. We do not suggest purchasing any or all stocks which are mentioned in any email alerts, tweets, or dashboard entries.
