About Paydirt

What Paydirt is

Paydirt shows the stock trades that members of Congress and company insiders report to the government. Company insiders are people like a company's bosses, its board members and its biggest owners. The reports are public. Paydirt collects them from official sources: the House Clerk and the Senate eFD system for Congress, and SEC EDGAR for company insiders.

Each trade is shown just as it was filed. Every trade has two dates: the day the trade happened, and the day it was reported. That way you can always see how long the person waited to tell the public.

Everything is organized by person. Each trade goes on the page of the person who made it, and the leaderboard ranks people, not single trades. Each company has its own page too. The feed shows the newest trades first, Congress lists every member, and tickers lists every company.

What Paydirt is not

Paydirt is arithmetic on curated filings: it does math on reports it has gathered and checked. Nothing here is placed for you and nothing is a recommendation. Paydirt is not a broker, not an adviser, and not an account of any kind.

The returns on these pages measure reported trades from the day each report became public. They are a measure of the reports, not money in a real account. Past returns only describe trades that already happened. They do not predict the future. The official version of this is in section 2 of the terms.

What is computed, and how it is labeled

Paydirt follows two rules on every page. First, every trade shows both of its dates. Second, any number Paydirt worked out itself is labeled derived. That word means Paydirt calculated it; it was not in the original report.

For example, members of Congress report the size of a trade as a range, like $15,001 to $50,000. When Paydirt needs one number for math, it uses the middle of the range and always shows the range next to it. A return always shows how many trades it is based on. A delay-adjusted return always sits next to the typical delay behind it.

The numbers Paydirt works out are how long each report took, the return on each trade, the delay-adjusted return, the Impact on $10,000 chart, and the price charts on company pages. The returns guide explains how each one is measured. The official version is in section 3 of the terms.

Where the filings come from

Members of Congress report their trades under a law called the STOCK Act. They send the reports to the House Clerk or the Senate, and Paydirt reads both. Company bosses, board members and anyone who owns more than ten percent of a company file a Form 4 with the SEC, the government agency that oversees the stock market. Paydirt reads those from EDGAR, the SEC's public filing website.

Paydirt checks for new reports all day, and the site updates every fifteen minutes. Returns and delays are worked out once a night. People sometimes fix their reports, file them late, or make mistakes. Paydirt shows all of that as filed. Every row links to the original report, and the reports that missed their deadline are listed on the late disclosures page.

Two short guides explain the two kinds of report: what a Form 4 is and how STOCK Act disclosure works.

Who runs it

Paydirt is an independent service operated by its owner under the trading name Paydirt. You do not need an account to read it. A free account lets you keep a watchlist. Send questions, corrections and requests to hello@paydirt.news. The terms and the privacy page cover the rest.