LoadingLoadingLoadingUnderstand reported insider ownership changes, what Form 4 records, and why transaction context matters before it becomes research context.
27,014 Form 4 transactions from 15,010 people across 3,779 companies. 20,872 were sales and 6,142 were purchases, about 3.4 sales for every purchase. That ratio is normal and is not a bearish signal: insiders are paid in stock and sell for many reasons, while an open-market purchase costs them their own money. It is the reason the purchase side is worth counting separately.
Last six months, counting separate people rather than separate filings, and only where the buying was spread out rather than bunched. A grant or a company purchase programme can put twenty insiders on the tape at once, which is not the same thing as twenty people choosing to buy.
Open-market purchases by sector over the same six months, with the number of distinct companies behind each count.
| Sector | Purchases | Companies |
|---|---|---|
| Financial Services | 1,111 | 297 |
| Healthcare | 834 | 258 |
| Technology | 592 | 157 |
| Industrials | 551 | 175 |
| Consumer Cyclical | 402 | 122 |
| Energy | 338 | 65 |
An insider has two business days to report a transaction, and they mostly use them: across every Form 4 above, the median gap between the transaction and the filing was 2 calendar days, and 64.2% arrived within two calendar days. These are calendar days, so a trade made on a Friday counts against the weekend - the figure describes how fast disclosure reaches you, not whether a filer met the deadline.
Compare 6 insider trading trackers: free Form 4 screens, purchase filters, filing links, chart context and dated costs. Includes OpenInsider and SEC EDGAR.
What academic insider-trading research can tell you, and why a reported purchase is not a guaranteed return or a ready-made strategy.
Read SEC Form 4 transaction codes, reporting deadlines, ownership and trading-plan details before treating an insider filing as a purchase.