
Show HN: Dashboard for tracking insider trading at S&P 500 companies - greatwave1
https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/insidertrading
======
greatwave1
The site kept getting hugged to death, so I'm temporarily adding a free login
gate to reduce the traffic load

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capableweb
Keep in mind by adding that gate, you're no longer adhering to the guidelines
of Show HN. I advise you to read through them before submitting more stories:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

~~~
throwaway82828
It might be a good idea to understand the guidelines before 'advising others.'

The idea for this guideline is not to link to a teaser that can't be used. You
can use this. You just need to sign in.

~~~
dang
It's sort of in-between. You're right that the rules don't exclude projects
that require sign-in to try out. But users don't like it, and it's not
encouraged. It's particularly repelling to readers if they click on a Show HN
title only to go to a page that contains nothing but a call to sign up.

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bko
I'm skeptical of claims that insider trading is prevalent among those that are
not professional traders. I recently analyzed the trading activity of Senators
[0], and found the evidence that rampant insider trading to be unconvincing.

In its simplest form, insider trading consists of someone knowing something
about performance or similar relative measures that would affect a stock
price. But as Matt Levine points out, knowing the future isn't that helpful
[1]. Research found that even when it has been proven that professional
investors had and acted on insider information, their track record was still
spotty.

I even made an app [2] where you can get a companies past and future
performance numbers, and you try and guess which of two opposite paths the
stock took. I call it the insider trading game, and its a lot harder than it
looks.

[edit] Just reminded of the Jim Cramer still showing two headlines: "More than
16M Americans have lost jobs in 3 week, dow's best week since 1938" [3]. I'm
skeptical a non-professional trader would be able to somehow deduce strong
stock market performance from early access to something like 16mm Americans
having lost their jobs in 3 weeks.

[0] [https://medium.com/ml-everything/analyzing-us-senators-
stock...](https://medium.com/ml-everything/analyzing-us-senators-stock-
picks-e8106bbbe8e)

[1]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-26/knowin...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-26/knowing-
the-future-isn-t-that-helpful)

[2] [https://insider-trading-game.netlify.com/](https://insider-trading-
game.netlify.com/)

[3] [https://i.redd.it/rrnajxjdb6s41.jpg](https://i.redd.it/rrnajxjdb6s41.jpg)

~~~
take_a_breath
All information is not created equal. Classified briefings on a virus that may
shutdown entire sectors of the economy isn’t the same as unemployment numbers.
Everyone knew a ton of people were going to be laid off.

From your blog: “Here’s a trade from David Perdue, the great Senator of
Georgia. He actually made nearly half the trades of our dataset, and it makes
sense since he’s worth $15.8 million”

Why would it makes sense for him to make half the trades because he is worth
$15.8 million? Plenty of Senators are worth more than that.

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capableweb
> he’s worth $15.8 million

On a unrelated note, how the hell can a senator sit on so much and be worth so
much? Aren't they supposed to have the public in their main interest? Sitting
on all those assets looks really suspicious. Seems they care more about
themselves than their community/country.

~~~
wernercd
Why should he do more with those assets? There's nothing that forces him
too...

if he donates to charity - or as the POTUS does, gives his salary away (or
doesn't) - that's entirely on him.

Being "rich" and "caring" are two separate and unrelated things...

If I care, but do something that makes more than I spend - or invest wisely
into something that makes more... I care and make money...

"if you have money you don't care" is a seriously flawed attitude.

~~~
capableweb
I could understand that someone would like to have a buffer in case of
emergencies, but it seems like $15.8 million is a bit over the "emergency
buffer" line and becomes more like they want more money just to have more
money.

You're a public servant, supposedly working for the public, why you need so
much? Share it with the ones who have zero instead. The US have a huge
problems in many areas, like healthcare, homelessness and other serious
problems, if these hoarders would actually display a bit of care towards those
people, you can solve it.

But again, sitting on $15.8 million does not look like you're actually trying
to solve anything else but your ego.

~~~
wernercd
whether its $100 or $100m - why do you get to decide what's right for someone
else to have sitting in a bank account?

Why is your decision that "$1m is enough for anyone" (or whatever your
arbitrary amount is) the correct one? Why not 100k? or 10m? (arbitrary numbers
I know you haven't stated as such)

"You're a public servant" What does his personal finances have to do with his
public service?

as long as he's not making his money from his service (IE: Kick backs, sweet
deals for family, etc)?

Nothing.

"The US has huge problems" everyone/every country has huge problems in all
these areas - each in different flavors. You could take 100% of money (or
value, since a lot of "value" is in intangible stuff like property or stock
that isn't "money") from everyone above $1m (or your arbitrary cutt-off) and
guess what? We still couldn't afford "heatlhcare for all" and people will
still be homeless. Money isn't the problem and it doesn't solve all problems.
Just look at places like CA that are spending more and more and having worse
and worst problems - the issue isn't money.

At the end of the day... his having 15k, 15m, 15b or 15t means nothing about
his attitude, ego or ability to care.

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jonluca
Flagged for taking you straight to a signup page, this is not Show HN
eligible.

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whydoineedthis
fair flag. here's the home page for anyone interested.
[https://www.quiverquant.com/](https://www.quiverquant.com/)

~~~
bko
Their homepage doesn't offer much either. Their blog has one post that shows
an dual-axis line graph of % odds of a Sanders win and Tesla dollar stock
price over 2 1/2 months. That comparison is laughably naive.

[https://www.quiverquant.com/blog/](https://www.quiverquant.com/blog/)

~~~
whydoineedthis
yup, i fully agree. Their analysis looks about as accurate using a $5/hr
psychic to pick stocks.

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capableweb
Nice idea! More citizen tools for observing and inspecting the elite is always
welcome and good project to work on.

Some feedback:

\- INSIDER CONFIDENCE INDEX is missing some sort of description, not sure if
it's actually Insider Sentiment Index which is a establish term or if it's
something else.

\- Increase the contrast as almost all of the text (except table headers text)
is hard to read without really focusing.

~~~
greatwave1
Thanks for the feedback! The insider confidence index is a ratio of net
insider selling/buying to the total average volume of a stock in the last 30
days. I will make sure to add a better description, and try to improve the
fonts.

~~~
capableweb
> try to improve the fonts

The contrast is less about the fonts and more about the colors. Just making
the darker a bit more darker and the light a bit lighter should solve the
problem.

By the way, seems the page is now behind a login page, so it requires a
signup, it was not like that before, so you're now not adhering to the
guidelines for Show HN.

> Blog posts, sign-up pages, curated lists, and other reading material can't
> be tried out, so can't be Show HNs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

~~~
throwaway82828
I don't think you're interpreting this correctly. A "sign-up" page here is one
that just gets you on a list. You can certainly try this out, you just have to
log in.

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somid3
Ugg, guys finviz.com already has this and they provide WAY MORE INFORMATION
than what is provided. For example, let's look at Amazon:

[https://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=AMZN](https://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=AMZN)

You can see who, when, which quantity, dollar amounts, dates... I signed up
with your system and you only show in the LAST 6 MONTHS -- why not last
century? Your title is a complete click and bait.

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akudha
how do they get the data so soon (15 mins)?

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somid3
It is not in the last 15 mins. You'll notice there are two columns, the trade
date -- in the middle, and the SEC filling date on the right. Sometimes people
don't report for months.

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cybert00th
Not sure if this is local to just me (UK) but, when I try and load the site,
it either 502s straight away or times out without loading.

Anyone else seeing the same?

edit: OK I see others are experiencing the same thing.

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annoyingnoob
Straight to Login/Signup with no content? Must be a honeypot.

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rnotaro
Logins for the login gate:

Username: testest

Password: testest

~~~
joeskyyy
Ahahaha, I thought you were merely joking... apparently not!

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IanCal
Currently 502ing, is there a description you can put up in a comment while
it's down? Interested to know what this is, how it works.

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dannykwells
Some great correlation = causation analysis here (Sanders win likelihood vs
Tesla stock):

[https://www.quiverquant.com/blog/](https://www.quiverquant.com/blog/)

Sounds like the founders might need a basic course in stats, before giving
stock tips.

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firstfewshells
I think what would be more useful would be to have a summary of bulk deals for
the major index tracking ETFs and S&P 500 companies. I haven't been able to
get this data on any free platform.

~~~
jklein11
I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for? Do you have more
information about these "bulk deals"?

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firstfewshells
Basically, trades that exceed a large amount, say $10 million worth of Delta
stock bought or sold.

~~~
jklein11
Is this the type of data you are looking for?

[https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/9655/data-
source-f...](https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/9655/data-source-for-
historical-intra-day-bid-ask-price-data-for-stocks)

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altmind
[https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx](https://finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx)

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maest
Insider trader data has been mined to death, fyi. If there was ever any alpha
in it, it's long gone.

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maest
This goes straight to a signup page.

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a-wu
Appears to be hugged to death.

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_curious_
Thanks for sharing. What was the motivation to make this and use case?

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IBCNU
bah - signup?!

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keanebean86
It wouldn't let me use my preferred username: <a> Worst. Site. EVER!

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Emptysister
nginx/1.10.3 (Ubuntu), really?

