4 ms·
I posted this dashboard here back in March, but with the recent investigations into insider trading by Kodak and the USPS Postmaster General I thought it was ve
by greatwave1 6y ago
I posted this dashboard here back in March, but with the recent investigations into insider trading by Kodak and the USPS Postmaster General I thought it was very relevant once again.
There are a lot of sites out there which list off every insider transaction. That’s good if you want to find more detail on a specific case of suspected insider trading, but it makes it difficult to quickly identify companies with suspicious activity.
Instead of displaying data at the transaction-level, I decided to aggregate transactions from a 6-month rolling period. I then created the “Insider Confidence Index”, which measures a company’s insider trading activity relative to their total market volume.
I also created a graph showing daily net purchases/sales across all S&P 500 insiders, to give an idea of the aggregate sentiment among insiders. It was interesting to see a huge spike in selling back in early February, and then again a couple of weeks ago.
I’d love to hear any thoughts or suggestions you have on how to improve this dashboard, and if you’d prefer to see the data at a transaction-level.
- nnn1234 6y agoYou should give nongaap(on twitter) and matt levine free accounts and let them tweet what they find interesting. Working on similar things for the data tornado that is crypto.
- donkeyd 6y agoThis is awesome! That selling peak two weeks ago is massive, makes you wonder. Do you have any idea what the most prominent tickers were back then?
- UncleEntity 6y ago> It was interesting to see a huge spike in selling back in early February, and then again a couple of weeks ago. Any idea if this is planned share selling? Six month gap between the spikes would suggest this methinks.
- an_opabinia 6y agoWhat's difference does it make? People release bad news just after a planned sale. It's a total red herring.
- ISL 6y agoA suggestion: Consider reporting the per-company hover-over results for market cap and sentiment index to at most two significant figures.
- ghouse 6y ago> There are a lot of sites out there which list off every insider transaction. Perhaps pedantic, but those sites only list registered or declared insider transactions. "Insider Trading" - the illegal kind, is trading off of non-public information and can be done by non insiders (who wouldn't have SEC-declared transactions).
- ISL 6y agoCorrect -- it is quite common, however, to see lists of "Insider trades" which are declared trades from known insiders. Peter Lynch is famous for stating: "insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise." Keeping an eye on the trade flow from insiders is interesting at a minimum and at least perhaps useful.
- manquer 6y agoDoes converting/buying options count as insider transactions ? i.e. shares could be "bought" due to options nearing expiry etc
- jacques_chester 6y agoOption expiry is only a problem for employees. Senior management, who are the ones to watch because of their access to sensitive information, typically get options refreshed or amended.