How I Built an SEC Insider Trading Alert System With 3 API Calls

How I Built an SEC Insider Trading Alert System With 3 API Calls Every public company insider — CEOs, CFOs, board members — is legally required to report stock trades to the SEC within two business days via Form 4 filings. That's 200+ filings per day, all public data, and it's one of the most reliable trading signals available. I built an API that polls EDGAR, parses the XML, and returns clean JSON. Here's how to use it to build a real-time insider trading alert system. Why Insider Trades Matter Academic research consistently shows that insider purchases outperform the market by 7-10% annually. When a CEO buys $2M of their own stock on the open market, they're putting personal money where their mouth is. That's a signal worth tracking. The problem: SEC EDGAR returns raw XML/SGML documents designed for regulators, not developers. Parsing Form 4 filings means dealing with accession numbers, CIK lookups, and XML namespaces. The API handles all of that and returns structured JSON. Quick St