Disclosures

Not investment advice

Tickertail publishes impersonal, informational analysis of public records: the trades and holdings that politicians, corporate insiders, and large funds are legally required to disclose. The same content goes to every reader alike, on a general and regular basis. It is not tailored to any person, and it is not timed to promote any particular transaction. We know nothing about your financial situation, objectives, or risk tolerance, and nothing on this site takes them into account.

Tickertail is not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, or fiduciary, and is not registered with the SEC, FINRA, or any other financial regulator. Nothing on the site is a recommendation or solicitation to buy, sell, or hold any security, and no score, grade, or analysis should be read as one. A high Signal Score means a filing is unusual and worth reading about; it does not mean you should trade.

Past performance does not predict future results. The returns we show are historical and descriptive, always measured with the disclosure delay shown, and say nothing about what any stock will do next. Investing involves risk, including the loss of the money you put in. For decisions about your money, talk to a licensed professional who actually knows your situation.

Data sources and accuracy

Every figure on the site derives from official public filings and end-of-day market prices. The five feeds, and how fast the law requires each to arrive:

Three properties of the source data worth knowing. First, the lag: congressional filings can legally arrive up to 45 days after the trade, and every card shows that gap rather than hiding it. Second, ranges: congressional filings state dollar ranges, not exact amounts; where we need a single number we use the range midpoint (see what the numbers mean). Third, amendments: filers correct and amend filings, and when they do, the record changes after we first reported it.

We publish what the filing says, when it says it. Every card links to its source filing so you can check our reading against the official record. Tickertail processes filings automatically and at volume; despite the verification checks that run before numbers ship, occasional errors are possible, and the content is provided as-is. Our commitment is prompt, visible correction (the corrections policy), not a warranty of perfection.

Corrections

When we get something wrong, we correct the record promptly. Our commitment on how: corrections get dated and shown on the affected card or page rather than silently overwritten, and material errors get a note in the next brief.

Filers also amend their own filings, which is related but different. Amended 13F filings supersede the originals automatically. Amendment handling for the other feeds is still being built: an amended congressional filing currently appears alongside the original rather than replacing it, and amended insider filings (Form 4/A) are not yet imported. Until that work ships, the source filing linked on each card is the ground truth.

To report an error: [a corrections address (corrections@ on the production domain) will be published here once the mail domain is live]

How we use AI

AI at Tickertail writes prose, never numbers. Where a summary or desk take is drafted by AI, two promises govern it:

• Anything AI-written is labeled as AI-written in the product, until an editor reviews and approves it.
• The math is never AI-generated. Every number on the site (scores, returns, ranges, benchmarks) is computed from filings by regular, deterministic code. AI drafts sentences; it never produces figures, scores, or recommendations.

Much of the card text is not written by anyone at all: it is assembled from each filing's structured fields by that same deterministic code, so the same filing always produces the same words. AI-drafted passages can still misstate a detail; that is exactly why every summary links to its source filing. When in doubt, trust the filing over the summary, and tell us via the corrections policy so we can fix it.

What the numbers mean

• Two return clocks.Returns are measured from two dates: the filer's trade date (what the filer experienced) and the date the filing became public (what a reader could actually have seen). Both use closing prices.
• Disclosure-date convention. Whenever we describe what following a disclosure would have returned, the clock starts the day the filing became public, never the trade date you could not have known about.
• Range midpoints. Congressional filings disclose dollar ranges, not exact amounts. Where a single dollar figure is needed, we use the midpoint of the disclosed range.
• The benchmark.Wherever a return is compared to the market, the comparison is the S&P 500 over the identical window.
• Cost of the delay.The return from the filer's entry minus the return from the disclosure date, in percentage points: what the legally permitted reporting lag cost a reader.

How to read the scores built on these definitions (the Signal Score and the CAT Scan), and a live back-test of the Signal Score against realized returns, are on the methodology page. The exact weights and formulas behind the scores are proprietary; the definitions above, the sources, and the back-test are public, so every printed number has a public meaning even though the recipe is ours.

Conflicts of interest

Coverage cannot be bought or suppressed: no politician, insider, issuer, or fund pays to appear on Tickertail or to be removed from it, and we accept no compensation from anyone we cover.

[staff trading policy: an owner decision is pending on whether operator staff may trade securities covered by the site; the policy will be published here before paid subscriptions open]