Federal judge stock trade alerts

Capitol Gains covers the federal judiciary alongside Congress and the executive branch. Federal judges report their securities transactions in annual financial disclosure reports filed under the Ethics in Government Act, and Capitol Gains builds an alert from those public records.

Our source

Every judiciary alert traces back to a federal judge's official financial disclosure report, compiled by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and made searchable in a free public database. We report only what the filing says; there is no private data or rumor behind an alert.

Which court the judge sits on

Each judge's alert names their specific court - a U.S. District Court, a Court of Appeals circuit, a bankruptcy or magistrate seat - and Supreme Court justices are flagged as such. So you can read a trade against the bench the judge actually sits on, not a generic 'federal judge' label.

Judges file annually, not per trade

This is the key difference from Congress and the executive branch. Members of Congress and senior executive officials file a periodic transaction report under the STOCK Act soon after a trade. Federal judges are covered by the Ethics in Government Act instead, and they disclose their trades once a year in an annual report - so the record arrives later and is grouped by year rather than filed trade by trade.

Amounts are reported in ranges

Like other federal disclosures, a judge's report gives an amount range rather than an exact figure, and it marks whether each line was a purchase, a sale, or an exchange during the year. Capitol Gains carries that range through to the alert so the scale of a trade is clear without overstating its precision.

Accuracy and timing

We report what the filing says and send the alert when the report becomes public. Because judges disclose annually, this is the most delayed of the three branches we cover - it is a record of the past year's trades, not a real-time signal.

Common questions

Do federal judges file under the STOCK Act?
No. Federal judges disclose under the Ethics in Government Act, in annual financial disclosure reports. The STOCK Act's periodic, soon-after-the-trade reporting applies to Congress and to senior executive-branch officials, while judges report once a year.