POTE/README.md

# POTE – Public Officials Trading Explorer

**Research-only tool for tracking and analyzing public stock trades by government officials.**

⚠️ **Important**: This project is for personal research and transparency analysis only. It is **NOT** for investment advice or live trading.

## What is this?

POTE tracks stock trading activity of government officials (starting with U.S. Congress) using lawfully available public data sources. It computes research metrics, descriptive signals, and risk/ethics flags to help understand trading patterns.

## Key constraints

- **Public data only**: House Stock Watcher (free!), yfinance (free!), QuiverQuant/FMP (optional)
- **Research framing**: All outputs are descriptive analytics, not trading recommendations
- **No inside information claims**: We use public disclosures that may be delayed or incomplete

## Current Status

✅ **PR1 Complete**: Project scaffold, DB models, price loader  
✅ **PR2 Complete**: Congressional trade ingestion (House Stock Watcher)  
✅ **PR3 Complete**: Security enrichment + deployment infrastructure  
✅ **PR4 Complete**: Phase 2 analytics - returns, benchmarks, performance metrics  
**45+ passing tests, 88%+ coverage**

## Quick start

**🚀 Already deployed?** See **[QUICKSTART.md](QUICKSTART.md)** for full usage guide!

**📦 Deploying?** See **[PROXMOX_QUICKSTART.md](PROXMOX_QUICKSTART.md)** for Proxmox LXC deployment (recommended).

### Local Development
```bash
# Install
git clone <your-repo>
cd pote
make install
source venv/bin/activate

# Run migrations
make migrate

# Ingest sample data (offline, for testing)
python scripts/ingest_from_fixtures.py

# Enrich securities with company info
python scripts/enrich_securities.py

# With internet:
python scripts/fetch_congressional_trades.py
python scripts/fetch_sample_prices.py

# Run tests
make test

# Lint & format
make lint format
```

### Production Deployment
```bash
# Proxmox LXC (Recommended - 5 minutes)
bash scripts/proxmox_setup.sh

# Docker
docker-compose up -d
```

## Tech stack

- **Language**: Python 3.10+
- **Database**: PostgreSQL or SQLite (dev)
- **Data**: House Stock Watcher (free!), yfinance (free!), QuiverQuant/FMP (optional)
- **Libraries**: SQLAlchemy, Alembic, pandas, numpy, httpx, yfinance, scikit-learn
- **Testing**: pytest (28 tests, 87%+ coverage)

## Documentation

**Getting Started**:
- [`README.md`](README.md) – This file
- [`QUICKSTART.md`](QUICKSTART.md) – ⭐ **How to use your deployed POTE instance**
- [`STATUS.md`](STATUS.md) – Current project status
- [`FREE_TESTING_QUICKSTART.md`](FREE_TESTING_QUICKSTART.md) – Test for $0
- [`OFFLINE_DEMO.md`](OFFLINE_DEMO.md) – Works without internet!

**Deployment**:
- [`PROXMOX_QUICKSTART.md`](PROXMOX_QUICKSTART.md) – ⭐ **Proxmox quick deployment (5 min)**
- [`docs/07_deployment.md`](docs/07_deployment.md) – Full deployment guide (all platforms)
- [`docs/08_proxmox_deployment.md`](docs/08_proxmox_deployment.md) – Proxmox detailed guide
- [`Dockerfile`](Dockerfile) + [`docker-compose.yml`](docker-compose.yml) – Docker setup

**Technical**:
- [`docs/00_mvp.md`](docs/00_mvp.md) – MVP roadmap
- [`docs/01_architecture.md`](docs/01_architecture.md) – Architecture
- [`docs/02_data_model.md`](docs/02_data_model.md) – Database schema
- [`docs/03_data_sources.md`](docs/03_data_sources.md) – Data sources
- [`docs/04_safety_ethics.md`](docs/04_safety_ethics.md) – Research-only guardrails
- [`docs/05_dev_setup.md`](docs/05_dev_setup.md) – Dev conventions
- [`docs/06_free_testing_data.md`](docs/06_free_testing_data.md) – Testing strategies

**PR Summaries**:
- [`docs/PR1_SUMMARY.md`](docs/PR1_SUMMARY.md) – Scaffold + price loader
- [`docs/PR2_SUMMARY.md`](docs/PR2_SUMMARY.md) – Congressional trades
- [`docs/PR3_SUMMARY.md`](docs/PR3_SUMMARY.md) – Enrichment + deployment
- [`docs/PR4_SUMMARY.md`](docs/PR4_SUMMARY.md) – ⭐ **Analytics foundation (returns, benchmarks, metrics)**

## What's Working Now

- ✅ SQLAlchemy models for officials, securities, trades, prices
- ✅ Alembic migrations
- ✅ Price loader with yfinance (idempotent, upsert)
- ✅ Congressional trade ingestion from House Stock Watcher (FREE!)
- ✅ Security enrichment (company names, sectors, industries)
- ✅ ETL to populate officials & trades tables
- ✅ Docker + deployment infrastructure
- ✅ 37 passing tests with 87%+ coverage
- ✅ Linting (ruff + mypy) all green
- ✅ Works 100% offline with fixtures

## What You Can Do Now

### Analyze Performance
```bash
# Analyze specific official
python scripts/analyze_official.py "Nancy Pelosi" --window 90

# System-wide analysis
python scripts/calculate_all_returns.py
```

### Add More Data
```bash
# Manual entry
python scripts/add_custom_trades.py

# CSV import
python scripts/scrape_alternative_sources.py import trades.csv
```

## Next Steps (Phase 3)

- Signals: "follow_research", "avoid_risk", "watch" with confidence scores
- Clustering: group officials by trading behavior patterns
- API: FastAPI backend for queries
- Dashboard: React/Streamlit visualization

See [`docs/00_mvp.md`](docs/00_mvp.md) for the full roadmap.

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**License**: MIT (for research/educational use only)  
**Disclaimer**: Not investment advice. Use public data only. No claims about inside information.