Alternative Data API for Hedge Funds: Political, Insider and 13F Signals in One Feed

How quant and discretionary funds use political and insider alternative data, what point-in-time correctness means, and how to load it into a research stack through an API.

Alternative data used to mean credit card panels and satellite images with six-figure price tags. A growing part of it is free in principle: government disclosures about who trades what, who lobbies whom and who wins federal contracts. The cost is in collecting, cleaning and aligning it in time. This article covers how funds use political and insider data and what to demand from an API that delivers it.

Key takeaways

• Political and insider disclosures are public, timestamped and legally required, which makes them good research inputs.
• Point-in-time correctness is everything: a backtest must only use what was public on each day.
• The useful signals usually come from combinations, such as insider buying clusters, Congress buying plus new contracts, or lobbying growth.
• Load full datasets nightly rather than calling an API millions of times.

The datasets that matter

Bourse delivers all of them through one API with the same conventions, plus market context such as short interest, Treasury yields and CFTC positioning.

Point-in-time correctness

The most common mistake in alternative data research is look-ahead bias. A Congress trade dated March 1 might not have been public until April 10. If your backtest buys on March 1, your results are fiction.

Every Bourse dataset carries both dates where they exist: the trade date and the disclosure or filing date. Bourse's own strategies only enter positions after the filing was public, and the same fields let you do that in your own research.

Signals funds actually test

• Insider buying clusters. Several different insiders buying the same stock within 30 days. Available directly at /v1/insider-clusters, and for Europe at /v1/eu-insider-clusters.
• Congress net buying. Members buying more than selling a stock over a window, sometimes weighted by committee seats relevant to the company.
• Lobbying growth plus contracts. Companies increasing lobbying spend that then win new federal contracts. Bourse combines these in its DC Insider Score.
• Revolving door. Companies hiring former officials as lobbyists.
• Contrarian media. Calls made on CNBC, scored after the fact.

Loading the data into your stack

Paginated REST works for apps. For research, you want whole tables:

``bash # API Pro: signed links to last night's full files (NDJSON.gz) curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $BOURSE_KEY" https://api.bourse.pl/v1/exports ``

A nightly job can download every file into S3, then load it into Snowflake, BigQuery or a local Parquet lake. Bulk endpoints (/v1/bulk/{dataset}) return up to 100,000 rows per request with the same filters as the regular API.

Compliance notes

Political data raises questions compliance teams ask early:

• The data comes from public disclosures, not from anyone's private information.
• Some sources limit commercial use, for example OGE 278 reports outside news media. Check the API & Data License and the original sources.
• Keep an audit trail of what data was available when, which point-in-time fields make easy.

Commercial access

Funds using data in investment processes need a license that allows it. Bourse API Pro includes a commercial license, 250,000 requests a day, nightly exports and priority support, for $499 a month. Enterprise terms (delivery to your own S3 or GCS, custom datasets) are available on request.

Bourse provides financial data and editorial information, parts of which are generated by AI. This page is for general education only. It is not personalised investment advice or a recommendation to buy or sell any financial instrument. Make your own decisions.