How to read a periodic transaction report
The documents are public and free. Once you know which fields carry weight, a PTR takes about thirty seconds to read.
By the Trade Record deskReviewed 6 min read2 sources
The fields that matter
- Transaction date
- When the trade happened. This is the date to reason about — not the filing date, which can trail it by weeks.
- Notification date
- When the filer says they learned of it. It starts the 30-day clock and is self-reported.
- Filing date
- When the document was received. The gap to the transaction date is the compliance figure.
- Owner
- SP for spouse, DC for dependent child, JT for joint. A trade marked SP was not necessarily the member’s decision.
- Asset and type
- The issuer, plus a code: [ST] for stock, [OP] for options, [MF] for mutual fund. Only some of these identify a single company.
- Amount
- One of ten brackets. Never a figure.
Two things that mislead
And a filing under a member’s name may describe a spouse’s trade in an account the member does not direct. The Owner column is the only place that distinction appears, and it is the field most often dropped when a filing is summarised elsewhere.
Sources
Keep reading
- Why a disclosed amount is a range and never a numberMembers report one of ten brackets, not a figure. Everything you read about congressional trading profits is estimated from those brackets — here is how, and how wrong it can be.
- The 45-day rule, and what a late filing actually costsThe only hard number in the law, why most filings arrive in the last week they can, and why the $200 penalty is weaker than it sounds.
- The STOCK Act, explainedWhat the 2012 law actually requires members of Congress to disclose, who it covers, and the three things people most often get wrong about it.
General information about a public disclosure law. Not legal advice, not investment advice, and not affiliated with any government body.