Corporate insiders — officers, directors, and anyone owning more than 10% of a company — are legally required to report almost every trade in their own company's stock to the SEC, using a form called a Form 4. It has to be filed within two business days of the trade. That means insider buying and selling shows up in public records well before most people ever hear about it in the news.
What a Form 4 actually tells you
Each filing discloses:
- Who traded — name and role (CEO, CFO, director, 10%+ owner)
- What kind of transaction — an open-market purchase or sale (code P or S), an option exercise, a grant, or a gift
- How many shares, at what price, and their total holding after the trade
Why the transaction code matters more than the headline
"Insider sold $2M of stock" sounds alarming in a headline, but a huge share of insider sales are pre-scheduled (10b5-1 plans), tax-related, or just an executive diversifying — not a vote of no confidence. Open-market purchases (code P), on the other hand, are the insider spending their own cash to buy more stock at current prices — no company is required to do this, so it tends to carry more signal than a routine, planned sale.
The honest way to use this data is as one input, not a trading trigger on its own — a cluster of multiple insiders buying in a short window is more meaningful than any single transaction.
Where Quantora fits
Quantora's Insider Transactions section (part of Stock Intelligence) reads Form 4 filings directly from SEC EDGAR for any US-listed stock — differentiating opens-market buys and sells from option exercises and grants, with the actual filer's name, role, share count, and date. It's paired with institutional ownership (13F), short interest, and buyback/dilution tracking — all from the same public SEC filings, all free.