Greg Steube filed a disclosure showing he purchased IonQ on March 18. Over the next 30 days, that position posted 27.5% forward alpha. The heat scorer looked at the trade, assigned it a 30, slapped on a yellow label, and moved on. No flag. No Blazing classification. Nothing that would catch a reader's eye scrolling through the filings. Ro Khanna did almost the same thing twelve days later: bought Robinhood Markets on March 30, earned 27.9% forward alpha in 30 days, and got a 45 and another yellow. Together, five of the top six forward-alpha trades in this dossier scored somewhere between 30 and 45. All yellow. None flagged. And every single one came in under $15,000. The pattern isn't subtle. The question is whether the algorithm was designed to miss it or just happened to.
The Trade That Started This
Greg Steube is a Florida Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who, per his disclosure, bought IonQ sometime on or around March 18. The filing lists the purchase in the $1,000-$15,000 range, which is the bracket Congress uses when they'd prefer you not know the exact number. IonQ is a quantum computing company. It is not a grocery chain. It is not a utility. It is a speculative-growth name that moves fast when it moves, and over the 30 days following Steube's purchase, it moved: 27.5% forward alpha above the market.
The heat scorer gave that a 30.
For reference, a 30 is the kind of score the system generates when it's trying to say "we noticed, but not that much." Yellow means proceed with mild curiosity. It is not the red flag that surfaces a trade in the digest. It's the algorithmic equivalent of an HR form filed and immediately filed away.
Twenty-seven-point-five percent forward alpha in a month is not a mild curiosity. On a $15,000 position, that's over $4,000 in gains on a single disclosed trade, from a sitting member of Congress, in a company whose fortunes are directly tied to federal research and defense procurement. IonQ has government contracts. Congress funds those contracts. These facts are all public and they are all allowed to coexist in the same sentence.
Then Ro Khanna Did It Too
Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley and does not pretend not to be interested in tech stocks. On March 30, he purchased Robinhood Markets. Forward alpha over the next 30 days: 27.9%. Heat score: 45. Label: yellow. Flag: none.
Khanna's 45 is meaningfully higher than Steube's 30, which means the scorer did notice something different about the two trades. What it didn't do was flag either of them. Forty-five is still yellow. Robinhood pulling 27.9% alpha in a month while a sitting member of Congress holds it still didn't clear whatever internal bar triggers a Blazing classification.
The STOCK Act requires members to disclose trades within 45 days. It does not require them to divest, recuse, abstain, or look remotely embarrassed about the timing. The scorer's job is to surface the trades that look worth a second look. On the forward-alpha metric, both of these cleared that bar with room to spare. The scorer didn't agree.
Five of Six. All Yellow. All Sub-$15K.
This isn't a Steube-and-Khanna problem. It's a pattern.
Five of the top six forward-alpha trades in this dossier carry heat scores between 30 and 45. All yellow. None flagged. And the entire top six sits in the $1,000-$15,000 disclosure range. Every. Single. One.
The math here asks an uncomfortable question about the scorer's design: is purchase size weighted heavily enough that a sub-$15K trade is structurally disadvantaged in the flagging calculus, regardless of what the position actually returns? Because if the answer is yes, members of Congress have a very easy play. Keep individual purchases below $15,000. Collect the alpha. Stay yellow forever.
It's legal. That's the part that should bother you.
The $1,000-$15,000 bracket isn't just the bottom of the disclosure range. It's the bracket where the least specificity is required and, apparently, where the least scrutiny lands. You don't have to report the exact dollar amount when you buy between one and fifteen thousand. You don't have to report the exact return. You file the bracket and move on. The scorer, it turns out, may be doing the same.
What a 27% Blind Spot Looks Like in Practice
Here's the concrete version of the problem. If the heat scorer had surfaced Steube's IonQ trade with a Blazing flag, readers would have seen: a member of Congress, a vote on appropriations and defense research that funds quantum computing contractors, and a disclosed purchase of the most prominent publicly traded quantum computing stock in the U.S., all within a time window where that stock returned 27.5% against the market.
Instead they saw: a yellow label and a 30.
The same applies to Khanna's Robinhood buy. Robinhood's revenue is directly tied to retail trading volume, which is directly tied to regulatory posture, which is directly shaped by members of Congress on committees that oversee financial services. Khanna sits in a position to have informed views about the regulatory environment for fintech. His Robinhood position returned 27.9% forward alpha. The scorer gave it a 45 and a yellow.
Two different members. Two different political parties. Two different tickers. One systematic outcome: both trades skating through the flagging layer with above-market returns that would make most retail investors very happy and most compliance officers very nervous.
The receipts are public. Make of them what you make of them.