How to track what insiders and politicians are buying
Insiders sell for a hundred reasons. They buy for one. That asymmetry is the entire signal.
Extract the small amount of real information from a very large amount of disclosure.
How to track what insiders and politicians are buying works, in one picture
The same argument as the text, as a chain. Each step is what makes the next one possible.
One investment is the fund
Most go to zero and that is not a failure of selection, it is the shape of the asset class. It is why a venture investor has no use for a company that will merely do quite well.
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Understand the asymmetry
A director sells shares to buy a house, pay tax, diversify, or fund a divorce. Selling tells you almost nothing. Buying tells you they think the shares are worth more than the cash, using information you do not have. That is why cluster buying, several officers at once, is worth stopping for.
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For politicians, the trade is not the signal. The overlap is
Politician TradesA lawmaker buying an index fund is noise. A member of an energy committee repeatedly, well-timed, trading energy names is a pattern. Disclosure is late and reported in wide bands, so any strategy that needs speed is dead on arrival. What you are hunting is repetition plus proximity.
SteadyShares's Politician Trades view collects the filings so you can see the pattern rather than the individual line.
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And institutions file too
Smart MoneyFunds over $100m must file a 13F within 45 days of quarter end. It is stale, and it hides shorts, bonds and foreign holdings, but a brand new position from a manager with a real record is a well-earned reason to spend an evening on a company.
None of this is a buy signal. It is a reading list produced by people with better information than you.
You can explain why insider selling is nearly useless and insider buying is not.
Read next
Insiders sell for a hundred reasons. They buy for one. That asymmetry is the entire signal.
Institutional holdings read straight from SEC 13F filings, with the changes, which is the part that matters.