Methodology
How PoliTrade transforms public disclosures into research-ready financial data.
Public disclosures
PoliTrade collects publicly available financial-disclosure information from official U.S. government disclosure systems.
Reported transaction date
Transaction dates come from the disclosure itself. A disclosure may be filed after the underlying transaction occurred.
Stocks currently displayed
PoliTrade currently displays transaction-history records only when a usable stock ticker has been identified. Bonds and other non-stock securities without a ticker are retained in the source data but are not shown in the public transaction tables while support for those asset classes is being developed.
Modeled entry
For a disclosed purchase with a validated ticker, the modeled entry price is the first available adjusted daily close on or after the reported transaction date.
Latest value
Latest modeled performance uses the most recent completed adjusted daily close available in PoliTrade's market-price database.
S&P 500 benchmark
S&P 500 performance is calculated over the comparable modeled interval to provide broad-market context.
Disclosure ranges
When a filing provides a value range, PoliTrade preserves the minimum and maximum. It does not invent an exact transaction or asset value.
Important limitations
PoliTrade is an educational and public-interest research tool. Public financial disclosures are not real-time brokerage records. They may be delayed, amended, incomplete, image-only, or reported using broad value ranges.
Modeled returns are analytical estimates and do not represent verified execution prices, realized gains, investment performance, or investment advice.
Whenever available, PoliTrade retains a link to the underlying public filing so users can review the source record directly.