How the smart money confluence board works

The confluence board scores every stock by how many independent groups of informed buyers are active in it at once. This page is the complete method: the four feeds, the windows, and every filter, including the ones that shrank the board on purpose.

The four feeds

All four come from primary disclosures we already track elsewhere on the site, so the board adds no new data source, only the overlap:

  1. Congress purchases, from STOCK Act disclosures, counted over the last 30 days by disclosure date. Same data as our Congress tracker.
  2. Insider open-market buys, from SEC Form 4 filings, over the last 30 days. Only open-market purchases count; option exercises and grants do not. Same data as our insider tracker.
  3. Tracked hedge funds, two ways: 13D, 13G, and Form 3/4 filings naming the stock in the last 45 days, and latest-quarter 13F changes showing a new stake or a position increased by 25% or more. Same roster as our 13F tracker.
  4. Government contract awards of $1M or more to the company in the last 30 days, from SAM.gov and USAspending, matched on strict recipient-name boundaries to avoid false credits.

The noise filters

The board originally showed nearly three times as many stocks, and most rows were not signals. Three filters do the work:

Bulk congressional filings are dropped. A single disclosure containing more than 15 purchase lines is treated as an advisor rebalancing a portfolio, not a member picking stocks, and none of its lines count. We count purchase lines rather than distinct tickers, because a rebalance can hit the same name repeatedly. We deliberately do not gate on dollar amount: 88% of all congressional purchases fall in the smallest disclosure bracket, so an amount filter would erase the entire category. Amounts feed the strength score instead.

Insider buys are aggregated per person before they count. An individual insider must buy at least $50k, and at least one buyer in the stock must reach $100k. This kills the pattern where dozens of employees each buy a small fixed amount through a plan and the raw total looks like conviction.

Broad funds are excluded from the 13F signal. A fund reporting more than 300 positions is excluded outright, and a counted position must be worth at least $50M and at least 0.5% of the fund’s own reported book. Puts and calls never count as bullish positions.

Scoring

The signal score is simply how many of the four categories are active: the board lists stocks at 2/4 and above. The strength score (0 to 8) adds one point per active category plus up to one more for size or confirmation within it, so a multi-billion-dollar award outranks a minimum-bracket purchase. Rows sort by strength.

Lags to keep in mind

The board recomputes at most every 10 minutes, but the inputs lag by law: Form 4s arrive within two business days of the trade, congressional disclosures up to 45 days after it, and 13Fs up to 45 days after quarter end. When new quarterly 13Fs land, the whole fund column can churn at once.

The current board is downloadable as CSV. Free to reuse with attribution and a link. Questions about the data: [email protected].

Frequently asked questions

What does the score out of 4 mean?

It counts how many independent categories of buyer are active in a stock at once: Congress members, corporate insiders, tracked hedge funds, and government contract awards. A 3/4 means three of the four are active in their respective windows. The separate strength score (0 to 8) adds a point per category for size or confirmation.

Why does the board show so few stocks?

Deliberately. We filter out bulk advisor-driven congressional filings, small routine insider purchases, and positions that are rounding errors inside giant multi-thousand-position funds. What survives is a short list where several unrelated groups of informed buyers showed up in the same name at the same time.

Why are huge funds like Citadel excluded from the fund signal?

A fund holding thousands of positions is running a portfolio machine, not expressing a view; its 900th position tells you nothing. We only count a fund's filing as a signal when the fund runs a concentrated book and the position is meaningful relative to that fund's own assets.

How current is this data?

The board recomputes from the live feeds at most every 10 minutes, but the underlying disclosures lag by law: insider Form 4s up to two business days, congressional disclosures up to 45 days, and quarterly 13F filings up to 45 days after quarter end. The board can only ever be as fresh as the filings.

Informed buyers are frequently wrong, filings can be amended, and none of this is investment advice.