Methodology
Where our numbers come from
Every figure on TradesZ traces back to an official, public-domain government filing. This page explains exactly which records we use, how we process them, what our signals mean — and what they deliberately do not.
The primary sources
These are federal records in the public domain (17 U.S.C. §105). We read them directly from the source — no intermediary data vendor sits between the filing and what you read here.
- § SEC EDGAR — Form 13F (institutional holdings)
Every fund managing over $100M must disclose its U.S. equity positions each quarter. This is the raw material behind our "smart-money" and 13F-whale pages.
Search 13F filings on EDGAR ↗ - § SEC EDGAR — Form 4 (insider transactions)
Company officers, directors and 10%+ owners must report their own buys and sells within two business days. This drives our insider-buy signals and risk flags.
Search Form 4 filings on EDGAR ↗ - § U.S. House Clerk — Periodic Transaction Reports
Members of Congress must disclose stock trades under the STOCK Act. We display these under the news/communications-media provision that every tracker operates on. This powers our per-member Congress pages.
Browse House financial disclosures ↗
How we process it
- 1 Ingest
We pull filings from the primary feeds, parse the structured data, and normalise it against a single ticker registry so the same company links cleanly across every source.
- 2 Cross-reference
A single signal means little. We look for convergence — where institutional positioning, insider activity and Congressional trades point at the same name. The "smart-money" view is built by inverting all three sources onto each ticker.
- 3 Score & explain
Candidates are scored across fundamental, technical and event-driven factors, then written up in plain English with AI models grounded in the underlying filings and live web research. We surface risk flags the hype pages skip — going-concern doubts, dilution, weak balance sheets.
What the signals mean
- • Smart-money score — a factual summary of how much institutional, insider and Congressional attention a ticker currently shows. Higher means more documented activity, not a higher chance of going up.
- • Risk flags — material warnings pulled straight from the filings. We show them even when they undercut a popular name.
- • Tiers — our internal conviction ranking. They reflect how strongly the data converges, not a price target or a guarantee.
Update cadence
- ↻ Daily — universe scan, rankings and trend briefs refresh.
- ↻ Within days/weeks — insider Form 4 and Congressional reports appear as they are filed.
- ↻ Quarterly — institutional 13F positions update as the funds file (a ~45-day lag is inherent to the form).
Independence & limits
- ✗ Not investment advice. We summarise what public filings show — for education, not as a recommendation to buy or sell.
- ✗ Not real-time. Filings carry inherent reporting lags; treat everything here as historical disclosure, not a live trading signal.
- ✗ Not affiliated. TradesZ is independent of the SEC, the U.S. House, and any fund, manager or member of Congress named on the site.
Researched & published by TradesZ Research, an independent research platform. Not a licensed investment service. Always do your own research.