How to Read a STOCK Act Disclosure: A Field Guide

If you've ever tried to read a raw STOCK Act disclosure, you know the experience: a PDF or web form with inconsistent formatting, abbreviations nobody explains, and amount ranges so wide they're almost useless.

Here's a field-by-field breakdown of what everything means — and what actually matters.

The Fields in Every Disclosure

Asset Name

The stock, fund, or other security being traded. This sounds simple but gets complicated:

• Entries like "Apple Inc. (AAPL) Common Stock" are clear
• Entries like "SPY ETF" tell you almost nothing about sector intent
• Entries like "Vanguard Total Market Index" are essentially noise for analysis purposes
• Options and other derivatives are disclosed differently — look for "Call Option" or "Put Option" in the asset name

What matters: Individual stock picks in sectors the member oversees. Index funds and broad ETFs are low-signal.

Transaction Type

Three options:

• Purchase (P): Bought the asset
• Sale (S): Sold the asset
• Sale (Partial) (SP): Sold part of their position

What matters: Purchases are generally more interesting than sales. A purchase requires conviction — a sale could be for tax reasons, liquidity needs, or diversification. That said, a full sale (S) right before a negative announcement in the member's committee sector is worth flagging.

Transaction Date

The date the trade actually occurred. This is not the date you see the disclosure — it's the date the member executed the trade.

What matters: The gap between this date and the Disclosure Date (below). A long gap on a high-committee-overlap trade is a red flag.

Disclosure Date / Filing Date

The date the disclosure was filed with the House or Senate. Under the STOCK Act, this must be within 45 days of the Transaction Date.

What matters: Calculate the lag yourself: Disclosure Date minus Transaction Date. Anything over 30 days on a significant trade is worth noting. Anything at 40–45 days is the legal maximum and suggests the member waited as long as the law allows.

Amount

This is the most frustrating field in the entire disclosure system. Members don't report exact amounts — they report ranges:

| Range Label | Meaning | |------------|---------| | $1,001 – $15,000 | Small position | | $15,001 – $50,000 | Moderate position | | $50,001 – $100,000 | Meaningful position | | $100,001 – $250,000 | Significant position | | $250,001 – $500,000 | Large position | | $500,001 – $1,000,000 | Very large position | | $1,000,001 – $5,000,000 | Major position | | Over $5,000,000 | Institutional-scale |

What matters: The midpoint of the range is your best estimate of actual size. A "$500K–$1M" purchase is meaningfully different from a "$1K–$15K" one, even if both show up as "Purchase" in the feed.

Asset Type

Usually "Stock," "Bond," "Option," or "Other." Most analysis focuses on stock trades. Options are more interesting — a call option purchase gives more leverage than a stock purchase and suggests higher conviction.

Comment

An optional free-text field that members rarely use. When they do, it's often to note "Spouse transaction" or "Transaction by dependent child." Worth reading when present.

What's Not in the Disclosure

Just as important as what is there:

• No exact price: You don't know what they paid per share
• No share count: You don't know how many shares
• No reasoning: No explanation of why the trade was made
• No portfolio context: You don't know if this is their entire position or 1% of it
• No performance data: You don't know if the trade made money

This is why raw disclosures are hard to act on — they give you the skeleton of a trade without the context.

How Cloakroom Fills the Gaps

Cloakroom takes each disclosure and adds the context the filing system leaves out:

• Committee assignments: Is this member on a committee that oversees this sector?
• Legislation timing: Did they sponsor or vote on relevant bills near this date?
• Disclosure lag: How long did they wait to file?
• Cluster detection: Are other members trading the same ticker this week?
• AI reason: A plain-English explanation of why the score is what it is

The raw disclosure tells you what happened. The intent score tells you why it might matter.

A Worked Example

Raw disclosure:

Member: Sen. Jane Smith
Asset: Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT) Common Stock
Type: Purchase
Date: 2026-03-15
Disclosed: 2026-04-18
Amount: $250,001 – $500,000

What you can derive:

• Lag: 34 days — on the longer side
• Amount: ~$375K midpoint — a significant position
• Asset: LMT — primary US defence contractor

What you need to add:

• Sen. Smith sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee (direct oversight of defence contracts)
• She co-sponsored an amendment to the NDAA 9 days after the trade date
• Two other SASC members bought LMT in the same 7-day window

Cloakroom Intent Score: 87

The raw disclosure is a data point. The context makes it a signal.

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All STOCK Act data sourced from public House and Senate disclosure systems. Not investment advice.