FAQ
Questions about congressional trading data and this project.
Plain answers about what Capitol Alpha Machine shows, where its data comes from, and the careful limits on how disclosed congressional trading should be read.
What is Capitol Alpha Machine?
Capitol Alpha Machine is an interactive data-art project that visualizes disclosed U.S. congressional stock trading. It turns public disclosure records from Capitol Trades into five cinematic scenes covering trading volume, member exposure, market returns, and timing relative to public-law events. It is research context and data art, not investment advice.
Where does the congressional trading data come from?
The primary source is Capitol Trades public disclosure data. Returns Spectrum adds end-of-day market prices, and Timing Lattice uses Congress.gov public-law listings for the 118th and 119th Congresses. The current bundle reads 34,800 disclosures from 2023-06-15 to 2026-06-05.
What does disclosed trading volume mean?
Disclosed trading volume is the sum of buy and sell transaction values reported in congressional financial disclosures, currently $2.27B in total. It measures reported trading scale only. It is not profit, loss, market impact, intent, or an allegation of unlawful conduct.
Is Capitol Alpha Machine investment advice?
No. The project is editorial data visualization and research context only. It does not recommend securities, predict returns, or provide financial advice. Disclosed values are reported ranges used for visualization, not exact holdings, and should not be the basis for any trading decision.
Does the data prove insider trading or wrongdoing?
No. Committee-sector overlap and timing links are proximity heuristics designed to help readers inspect patterns. They are not evidence of causation, intent, privileged information, or unlawful conduct, and the project makes no allegations against any member of Congress.
What are representative disclosed values?
Congressional disclosures report value ranges, not exact amounts. Capitol Alpha Machine assigns a single representative value within each reported range to drive visual weight and ranking. These figures support visualization and comparison only and are not exact transaction accounting.
How is the Timing Lattice built?
Timing Lattice links public-law events to disclosed trades using date proximity and sector proximity. The current bundle connects 31 public-law events to 372 trades. Links are visualization heuristics for inspection, not claims that any law caused any trade.
How often is the data updated?
A crawlable weekly report records each data snapshot, and the latest bundle runs through 2026-06-05. The most recent figures, including $2.27B in disclosed volume across 34,800 disclosures, are always shown on the Latest update page.