Why are public disclosures always late?

What are the deadlines?

Every disclosure in the public record is a report of something that already happened, and the law gives the filer time. These are the deadlines for the disclosures OQRO reads, each from the rule or form we cite.

How long can the whole chain take?

The deadline is only the first step. For a trade by a member of Congress, a worst case under the deadlines is a report filed on day 45, and the STOCK Act then requires the forms to be made public on the official websites not later than 30 days after they are filed (Public Law 112-105). The two rules together allow up to 75 days between a trade and its publication, though a report can appear sooner. For a 13F, a position held on the first day of a quarter and still held at its end is reported in a filing due 45 days after the quarter, about 135 days after the first day. A position opened and closed within the quarter is not reported at all.

What are the steps between an event and a page?

1. The event. A trade, an award, a meeting with an official.
2. The notice. For a member of Congress, the date the member was notified of the transaction; the form asks for it.
3. The filing. The filer submits the report, within the deadline or after it.
4. The posting. The agency or chamber makes it public. For Congress the law sets a posting limit of 30 days after filing.
5. The reading. A tracker, a journalist or a reader finds it. OQRO reads the SEC's live filing feed about every five minutes on US business days, and shows the measured delay of each source on its status page.

For federal contracts, USAspending's glossary says awards data is ingested up to daily from government-wide systems, while the agency financial files are published monthly or quarterly. Executive orders reach the Federal Register at least one day after signing, typically several (see executive orders and proclamations).

Why are the deadlines set that way?

The rules we read do not give a rationale, so we do not state one. What they show is a design: some disclosures are event-driven (a Form 4, a 13D) and arrive within days; some are periodic (a 13F, an LD-2) and arrive on a calendar; and some depend on when the filer is notified. Each deadline is a limit. A filer may file earlier, and the lag is not always the maximum. Late filings also exist: see when a Form 4 is late and Congress filings past the 45-day deadline.

What does this mean for reading a filing?

Always read two dates: the date of the event and the date of the filing. The first says when it happened, the second how current your information is. A purchase "this week" may have been made weeks ago. Ranges in Congress reports and quarter-end snapshots in 13Fs also mean the exact timing and size are unknown from the filing alone.

What does a worked timeline look like?

An illustration for a member of Congress. A trade takes place on 3 March. The member is notified of it on 10 March. The filing deadline is the earlier of 30 days after notification, which is 9 April, or 45 days after the trade, which is 17 April, so the deadline is 9 April. If the report is filed on 9 April, the STOCK Act's posting limit of 30 days after filing allows publication as late as 9 May. The longest chain in this example is therefore 67 days from trade to posting, and a report filed or posted earlier would shorten it. Real filings vary, and the dates on the official filing are the facts.

What happens when you subtract the two dates?

When a filing gives both an event date and a filing date, subtract them. A Form 4 filed one day after its transaction is inside the two-business-day limit. A Congress report filed 40 days after the trade, when the member was notified two days after the trade, is inside the 45-day limit but past the 30 days from notification (32 days after the trade), and the rule applies whichever deadline is earlier. The subtraction says how current the information was when it became public, and nothing about why.

What this does not tell you

A late filing is not the same as a wrongful one, and a filing that is on time still arrives after the event. The deadline tells you the longest the law allows, not when a given person acted. The lag also says nothing about why anyone traded. OQRO links the official filing for each record so the dates can be checked.