How to read a congressional Periodic Transaction Report (PTR)

The header and the filing ID

Name, Status and State/District identify the filer. Status is Member for a Representative; officers and senior staff who file PTRs show their own status. The Filing ID at the foot of the page is the Clerk's document number and the number in the PDF's URL, so it is the stable way to cite a filing.

Owner: SP, DC, JT or blank

The first column of each transaction is the owner code. The House form defines it: "SP" for an asset held by the filer's spouse, "DC" for a dependent child, and "JT" for jointly held property. A blank means the member holds the asset alone. The form says filers "may, but are not required to" use the codes, so a blank is not proof of sole ownership; read the asset line and any account name too. In our example both lines are JT, and the account block at the bottom of the filing confirms the UMA account is owned jointly.

Asset, ticker and asset type code

The asset line gives the full name of the security, because the form requires it: "Providing only a ticker symbol is not permitted." On an electronic filing the ticker follows in parentheses and a two-letter asset type code follows in square brackets, so the first line reads "Applied Materials, Inc. - Common Stock (AMAT) [ST]". The Clerk publishes the full list of asset type codes. The ones you will meet most on a PTR:

Code	Meaning
ST	Stocks (including ADRs)
OP	Options
CS	Corporate Securities (Bonds and Notes)
GS	Government Securities and Agency Debt
CT	Cryptocurrency
PS	Stock (Not Publicly Traded)
RS	Restricted Stock Units (RSUs)
FU	Futures
EF	Exchange Traded Funds (ETF)
MF	Mutual Funds
OT	Other

EF and MF are on the list because the same codes serve the annual report. The PTR form excludes "any transaction in a Mutual Fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF)" from periodic reporting, so those codes are common on annual reports and rare on PTRs. For options, the asset name carries the underlying security, the strike, the expiration and whether it is a put or a call.

Transaction type: P, S, S (partial), E

The electronic filing abbreviates the form's four boxes. P is a purchase. S is a sale of the whole holding. S (partial) is a sale of part of it: the form asks filers to tick "Partial Sale" where "only a portion of an asset is sold (e.g., half of your shares in Mega Corporation)". E is an exchange, which the form calls "somewhat rare" and limits to cases such as stock certificates swapped in a merger. In the example, the AMAT line is S and the MCD line is S (partial), so the filer reports selling all of one position and part of the other. A reinvested dividend over $1,000 also shows as a purchase.

Two dates: transaction and notification

Each line has a Date and a Notification Date. The first is the transaction date, "generally the date the security was traded". The second is the day the filer was told about it. The Committee's CY2024 Instruction Guide notes that "if you executed the trade yourself, in most cases this will be the transaction date", so a gap between the two usually means someone else placed the trade: a broker, an adviser running a managed account, or a spouse. In the example the two sales are dated 09/15 and 09/25, both notified on 10/06, and the subholding line names a managed account. The filing itself says no more than that, and neither should you. The deadline runs from the notification date, capped at 45 days from the transaction date; the delays guide covers the arithmetic.

Amount: the range

The amount column is a category of value, never a figure. The categories, from the House form:

• $1,001 to $15,000
• $15,001 to $50,000
• $50,001 to $100,000
• $100,001 to $250,000
• $250,001 to $500,000
• $500,001 to $1,000,000
• $1,000,001 to $5,000,000
• $5,000,001 to $25,000,000
• $25,000,001 to $50,000,000
• Over $50,000,000
• Spouse or dependent child asset over $1,000,000 (used only for assets the filer has no interest in)

The category is chosen on the gross purchase or sale price, or the fair market value for an exchange; the form says a gain or loss "is irrelevant for the purposes of determining the transaction amount". There is no share count and no price per share anywhere on the form, which is the biggest difference from a corporate insider's Form 4.

"Cap. Gains > $200?"

Electronic PTRs carry a column headed "Cap. Gains > $200?". It is a yes-or-no flag on a sale, and it exists because of the annual report. The Committee's CY2024 Instruction Guide says to mark it "on sale transactions only ... if a sale resulted in a capital gain more than $200, unless the asset was held in a tax-deferred account", and that a filer who checks it must then disclose the gain as income on the annual Financial Disclosure report. So the PTR collects the flag at the time of sale. It does not say how large the gain was, an unchecked box can mean a loss, a small gain or a retirement account, and it does not change the amount category, which is always the gross sale price.

Filing status, description and subholding

Under each transaction the electronic form prints up to three more lines. Filing Status is New or Amended. Description is free text the filer added, often a note about an account or a corporate action. Subholding Of names the account or fund the asset sits inside; in the example it is "Morgan Stanley - Select UMA Account # 1", and the account appears again at the foot of the filing with its owner code and location. Read these lines before drawing any conclusion from the transaction line alone.

Amendments

A filer who finds an error files an amended PTR. The paper form has an "Amendment" box and a "Date of Report Being Amended" line; the electronic form marks each transaction's filing status Amended. The Committee's guide says amendments "are publicly available in the same manner as the original" reports they amend, and that correcting unintentional errors by amendment is "an ordinary part of the process for many filers". An amended report repeats the corrected lines, so the same trade can appear in two documents. InsiderAlpha keeps the newest copy of each trade as the primary record and counts it once.

Electronic filings and paper scans

There are two ways to file: the online system at fd.house.gov, or a pre-printed paper form hand-delivered or mailed to the Clerk's Legislative Resource Center (fax and email are not accepted). An electronic filing is published as a PDF with a text layer. A paper filing is published as a scan, with no text layer. InsiderAlpha parses electronic PTRs line by line; a paper PTR is listed with the filer, the filing date and a link to the scan, and no trades are invented from it. If a single line of an electronic filing cannot be read, the whole document is held back rather than shown as a partial report.

How the tracker shows each field

On the filing	On InsiderAlpha
Owner code (SP, DC, JT, blank)	Spouse, dependent child, joint, or the member
Asset name (TICKER) [code]	Asset name, ticker and asset type; a link to the company page when the ticker is one we cover
P, S, S (partial), E	Purchase, sale, partial sale, exchange
Date and Notification Date	Both dates, plus the filing date and the days from trade to filing
Amount category	The range exactly as filed; totals are shown as a range, never a midpoint
Filing Status	New or Amended; the newest copy of a trade is the primary record
Filing ID	A link to the official PDF on the Clerk's website

A trade filed more than 45 days after its transaction date is marked late. Nothing on these pages adds a price, a share count or a return, because the filing has none of them. The Congress tracker adds filters on every field above, member leaderboards, and the Form 4 open-market purchases by corporate insiders in the same company; see Congress trades vs insider trades for how to read the two side by side.

See recent House disclosures → · The STOCK Act explained → · Read a Form 4 box by box →

This article is informational and is not investment advice.