Rep. Darrell Issa

Question
Were trades disclosed within the STOCK Act's 45-day limit?

Insider signature
Delayed disclosure can conceal well-timed trades.

Analyst note
Late share 0.864, Wilson [0.703, 0.944]; 90th percentile lag 564 days; longest 594 days.

Evidence

Descriptive

Late share

86.4% [70.3%, 94.4%] 90%

Question
Does the member use options, and do option trades point the right way?

Insider signature
Informed traders favour options because leverage raises the payoff to private information.

Analyst note
No option trades were reported.

Evidence

Descriptive

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days

Question
Are the member's trades unusually large, especially just before news?

Insider signature
Informed trades are large relative to the trader's normal activity, because the profit from an informational edge scales with position size.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades; too few for a size reading.

Evidence

Descriptive

Question
Is trading concentrated in a few companies rather than spread across a diversified portfolio?

Insider signature
Informed trading concentrates in the few issuers tied to the information.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades; too few for a concentration reading.

Evidence

Descriptive

Question
Do trades arrive in routine rebalancing batches, or sporadically just before company news?

Insider signature
Opportunistic trades carry information and routine trades do not.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades; too few for a cadence reading.

Evidence

Descriptive

Question
Do purchases rise and sales fall more than the market in the weeks after the trade?

Insider signature
Purchases before price rises and sales before price falls.

Analyst note
Abnormal returns were not computed (daily prices unavailable or too few priced trades).

Evidence

Not computed

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days

Question
Before the market's biggest moves, did the member's trades point the right way?

Insider signature
An informed trader's trades just before a market-moving event point in the direction of the coming move.

Analyst note
No market-wide shocks or documented events fell within five trading days after the member's trades.

Evidence

Descriptive

Margin δ

10 points above a coin flip

Question
Does the member direct the trades, and does trading change when the member's access to information changes?

Insider signature
The person holding the information directs the trade.

Analyst note
Trading arrangement: not documented.

Evidence

Documentary

Question
Does the member trade industries their committees oversee, and do those trades do better?

Insider signature
Members may trade on information about industries their committees oversee.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades; too few for a committee-overlap reading.

Evidence

Descriptive

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days

Question
Did trades in stocks affected by the member's legislative work come before votes and move the right way?

Insider signature
Trading on knowledge of legislation before it is public.

Analyst note
No legislative event calendar with daily returns was available for this member.

Evidence

Not computed

Margin δ

0.5% per trade

Question
Did trading change after press scrutiny or an ethics inquiry?

Insider signature
A member who trades on information has an incentive to keep control of trading after scrutiny.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades.

Evidence

Descriptive

Question
After accounting for noise, does the member's trading beat that of other members?

Insider signature
A member with an information edge stands out from the cross-section of congressional traders.

Analyst note
Requires T4 for every member; computed in the cross-member pass.

Evidence

Not computed

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days

Question
When a traded stock made a large unexpected move soon after the trade, was the trade on the right side?

Insider signature
Buying shortly before a large jump or selling shortly before a large drop.

Analyst note
Daily prices unavailable.

Evidence

Not computed

Margin δ

10 points above a coin flip

Question
Does the member trade the same stock in the same direction as other members at the same time more than chance predicts?

Insider signature
Shared nonpublic information spreads through networks and shows up as clustered trades.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades.

Evidence

Descriptive

Question
Do trades in a spouse's or dependent's name do better than the member's own?

Insider signature
Routing informed trades through family accounts.

Analyst note
Only 0 trades name the account owner; at least 10 are needed.

Evidence

Not computed

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days

Question
Does the member buy and sell the same stock within six months, and do those round trips beat the market?

Insider signature
Short-horizon round trips capture a temporary informational edge.

Analyst note
Only 0 directional trades.

Evidence

Descriptive

Margin δ

0.5% per trade over 21 days