10
11 Comments

Show Indie Hackers: See Stocks that senators are trading.

With the recent news of the investigation of 3 Senator members being investigated for insider trading due to their knowledge of actions that would be done by the government in response to COVID-19. These senators were able to position themselves extremely advantageously. Seeing that the worst that could happen to them is a slap on the wrist I decided to add more transparency to what exactly they are doing with their stocks.

Congressional members are required to report their trades to the Ethics of Financial Disclosure website. Sadly, it is a government website and doesn't exactly show this information is a super-readable format. Since the website is not meant for this - I had to build my own hacky solution to compile this information properly.

http://senatorstockwatcher.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/

See on a simple dashboard what senators have been doing before you even know why they are doing what they are doing.

Cheers,

  1. 1

    Just curious, how are you processing paper submissions and converting to database? Manually? For example, Richard Burr's periodic transaction report for February 27th.

    You don't have to reveal your method. Nice job on this.

    1. 1

      while I have attempted to convert those documents to process them using OCR tech, it would be far too cost-prohibitive to analyze. They DO get a record created but the transactions just can't be parsed - in which case I am going to just link directly to the source so the user can see the document themselves without parsing it.

      That feature will come very soon - its just the least complex solution to handle it at the budget i am willing to expand on this kind of project.

      1. 1

        True that.

        I wonder if there are any OCR biz that would partner up to help parse these types of docs. The idea of exposing the disclosures/reports so transparently would have an impact on how politicians manage these transactions. It would give campaigns and journalists instant access to important data. But the paper submissions and need for OCR is a big cramp in delivering a seamless experience unfortunately. I love the job that you’re doing — keep it up.

        1. 1

          I couldn't believe it if you told me when i first posted this - but it looks like OCR reading is pretty tenable now.

          The site absolutely exploded and I've had over 100K visits over the last 3 days. Had to move the site to its own domain and distribute over cloudfront.

          Also have been emails and offered lots of help in being able to get more info out to the public. So looks like we will be able to pull that off after all.

          Thanks for your support on the project!

          1. 1

            Good deal. You’re headed in the right direction. I’ve spent the last 10 years working with campaigns and can confidently assure you that if you further build upon the idea & improve the UI, you’ll see great success in this project.

            OCR could break this wide open. And better UI/UX given the audience.

  2. 1

    Really cool idea!

  3. 1

    love it! nice work. weekly data might be more useful. i'm a trader / investor, feel free to reach out if you need feedback.

    1. 1

      I am in the process of making some more time-based analyses - I didn't know the reception would be this great on this project! Check back often it should be updated soon!

  4. 1

    I love this. It seems like many dates don't have data though - will that change soon? I've also noticed that when I do pick a date with data, it's only ever one senator. Is that accurate? Would you consider adding an option to search by senator name or stock symbol? Very excited to see what you do next with this.

    1. 1

      Right now, it only reports the data for that given day - some days there are more than 1 filing. For example, March 31st was the day Kelly Loffler dump 35M in ICH stock and it is reported there. Right now I only have data back-dating to April 1, 2020 just to get started. I intend to scrape more for the past as well.

      I am working on adding more time-based metrics so the analyses have more insight and trends. I appreciate the kind words!

  5. 2

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

    1. 1

      What you suggested is doable for sure - actually, if you visit the API page (https://senatestockwatcher.com/api.html) you can see I already have data organized by senator!!

      That data set visualization is next but I just unveiled the ticker analysis tonight, so that'll be next week or so. Thank you for the superlike! haha

  6. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 14 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments