How to read the numbers
How the scores work
Tickertail puts two numbers on things. Both run 0-100. This page is the reader's guide: what each number means, what feeds it, and how seriously to take it. One thing it is not: the recipe. The exact weights are ours - what you get instead is every definition, every source, and a live report card we can't edit.
The Signal Score
"should I care about this one trade?" · per event · 0-100Every disclosed trade gets one. The Signal Score measures how much a single filing deserves your attention: a large, deliberate, out-of-character buy scores high; routine portfolio shuffling scores low.
It weighs the things you'd weigh yourself: whether it's a buy or a sell, how much money is on the line and how unusual that is for this filer, whether the filer's day job overlaps the industry they're trading, whether colleagues pile into the same name around the same time, and whether the pattern looks like a person making a decision or an advisor rebalancing on autopilot. Conviction is marked up; mechanical noise is marked down - and the card says which is which.
Reading the number: under 40 - probably noise. 55+ - worth a look. 80+ - the reason this site exists. The score caps at 100.
The CAT Scan
"how hot is this stock right now?" · per ticker · 0-100One number per stock: how much smart-money attention a ticker is drawing right now, built from every scored trade on that name in the recent past. Three things to know about how it reads:
- Recent news counts more.A fresh filing moves the number; a stale one fades out of it. Last week's buy matters more than last quarter's.
- A crowd is hotter than a loner. Several different filers touching the same stock reads hotter than one filer touching it repeatedly.
- Thin tape gets a flag.When there's barely any recent activity, we say "thin tape" instead of dressing up one trade as a trend.
What feeds the scores
official filings and closing prices · nothing elseBoth scores are computed from public, official filings plus end-of-day prices. Every card links the filing it came from, so you can always check our reading against the record.
| Feed | Source | How fast it arrives |
|---|---|---|
| House trades | Periodic Transaction Reports, Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives | by law, up to 45 days after the trade |
| Senate trades | Electronic financial disclosures (eFD), U.S. Senate Office of Public Records | by law, up to 45 days after the trade |
| Insider trades | SEC Form 4 filings, via EDGAR | two business days after the trade |
| Fund holdings | SEC Form 13F filings, via EDGAR | quarterly, up to 45 days after quarter end |
| Prices | Marketstack end-of-day closes | after each trading day |
The math - scores, returns, every number on the site - is computed from those filings by regular code. It is never AI-generated.
Does it actually work?
we grade our own homework - live, receipts attachedEvery trade on this site already carries its real return against the S&P 500. So here is our own score, marked against reality: if higher-scored buys don't out-perform lower-scored ones, you deserve to see that too.
| Signal Score bucket | Positions | Avg vs S&P (pts) | Median (pts) | Beat the S&P |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-39 (noise) | 2,261 | -2.8 | -9.3 | 38% |
| 40-54 | 466 | +0.1 | -3.9 | 44% |
| 55-79 (worth a look) | 182 | -3 | -8.8 | 35% |
| 80-100 (screaming) | 6 | +10.6 | +16.2 | 50% |
2,915 positions (one member × one ticker = one bet) folded from 5,139 priced congressional buys - members often refile the same bet many times, and counting filings instead of bets would let one repeated position masquerade as a trend. A position sits in the bucket of the hottest score it printed; its return is measured from the member's trade date to the latest close, minus the S&P 500 over the same window. Recomputed hourly. Caveats, honestly: short history, wide disclosed ranges, option bets are measured on the underlying stock (understates leverage), and the top bucket is still small. A diagnostic, not investment advice.
Our honesty rules
the moat- Copy math starts at disclosure.When we say what copying a trade would have earned, the clock starts the day the filing became public, at the closing price - never the day of a trade you couldn't have seen.
- The lag is drawn on every card. Every trade card shows the gap between the trade date and the day it became public. The delay is part of the story, so it lives on the card, not in a footnote.
- Missing data shows as missing.No score is ever invented to fill a gap: if a piece of data can't be confidently resolved, the signals that need it simply don't fire, unscored trades show a pending ring, and thin tape is labeled thin tape. We never guess.
- We grade our own homework. The back-test above recomputes from live data - it is allowed to embarrass us.
- The recipe is versioned. The weights are hand-set and versioned internally. When they change, every score on the site recomputes under the new version, so numbers stay comparable.
A note on what changed: until August 2026 this page printed the full weight table. It no longer does - the recipe is now proprietary; that's the honest trade-off of running a business on it. The definitions, the sources, and the live back-test stay public.
The scores are a reading of public filings, not a recommendation. Nothing here is investment advice; investing is risky - you can lose money. For decisions about your money, talk to a licensed professional.