Question 1

What is Political Alpha?

Accepted Answer

Political Alpha is Blockcircle's congressional and parliamentary trading intelligence feed. It ingests every disclosed stock, bond, and ETF trade from politicians across 18 countries, scores each trade for signal strength, and surfaces clusters, alpha decay between trade date and disclosure date, and compliance flags for late filings.

Question 2

Which countries does Political Alpha cover?

Accepted Answer

Political Alpha covers 18 countries with statutory disclosure regimes - including the United States (Congress and Senate under the STOCK Act), the United Kingdom (House of Commons and House of Lords), Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the European Parliament, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand.

Question 3

What is the STOCK Act?

Accepted Answer

The STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012) is the US federal law that requires members of Congress, Senators, and senior executive branch officials to publicly disclose every securities trade over $1,000 within 30 days of execution. Political Alpha ingests every PTR (periodic transaction report) the moment it is published.

Question 4

How does the signal score work?

Accepted Answer

Each politician trade receives a 0-100 signal score that weights the politician's historical forward-return performance, committee assignments relevant to the traded sector or ticker, position size, conviction (cluster of trades versus single isolated trade), and timing of the disclosure relative to the trade date.

Question 5

What is alpha decay?

Accepted Answer

Alpha decay measures how much of the alpha in a politician's trade is captured before the public disclosure. If a politician buys a stock and discloses 45 days later, alpha decay quantifies the return realised between trade date and disclosure date - the alpha the politician captured exclusively because of the late filing. Political Alpha tracks this for every trade.

Question 6

What is the compliance view?

Accepted Answer

The compliance view ranks politicians by their disclosure punctuality. Late filings are statutorily prohibited but the penalties are small. The compliance view flags repeat late filers, the cumulative days late across all their trades, and trade-versus-disclosure alpha decay - so you can identify politicians whose late filings produce the largest information advantage.

Political Alpha

Political Alpha - Real-time congressional and parliamentary trading intelligence across 18 countries

Coverage

Analytical Features

Frequently Asked Questions