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Insider trading disclosures (Form 4) are a window into how executives and directors view their own company’s prospects. When a CFO buys a significant block of stock on the open market, or when three directors at the same company all purchase shares within the same week, that’s a signal worth paying attention to. Insighthread captures every Form 4 transaction across 6,000+ US-listed companies and layers on proprietary intelligence — Conviction Scores, cluster detection, and sector heat maps — to help you quickly spot what matters and filter out the noise.

Finding Insider Activity

1

Open the Insider Trades Section

Select Insider Trades from the main sidebar. This opens the global insider activity feed, showing the most recent Form 4 filings across all covered companies in real time.
2

Browse or Search

Scroll the global feed to see recent activity across the market, or use the search bar to narrow down to a specific company or ticker. Searching for a ticker shows you only that company’s insider transactions — useful when you’re in the middle of researching a specific stock.
3

Apply Filters

Use the filter controls to focus on what you care about:
  • Transaction type — buy, sell, option exercise, gift
  • Insider role — CEO, CFO, Director, 10% Owner, or any other reporting person
  • Date range — last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or a custom range
Combining filters — for example, “CEO open-market buys in the last 30 days” — surfaces the highest-quality signals quickly.

Reading the Conviction Score

Every insider transaction on Insighthread carries a Conviction Score — a proprietary signal that measures how meaningful a transaction is likely to be.
ScoreWhat it typically means
HighLarge open-market purchase by a senior insider (CEO, CFO, board member), often during a period of cluster activity. This is the most significant signal.
MediumModerate purchase, or a purchase by a lower-ranking insider. Worth watching, but less definitive on its own.
LowRoutine option exercise, a small transaction, or a sale that follows a compensation grant. These happen on a scheduled basis and carry little independent signal.
Focus your attention on high-Conviction transactions, especially open-market purchases. These represent an insider spending their own money — not exercising a grant they received as compensation.

Spotting Cluster Signals

A single insider buying shares is interesting. Multiple insiders at the same company buying shares within the same short window is far more meaningful. Insighthread automatically detects cluster signals — instances where two or more insiders at the same company transact in the same direction within a defined time period. When you see a cluster flag on a company:
  • Click through to see the individual transactions that make up the cluster
  • Check the roles involved — a CEO and two independent directors all buying is a stronger cluster than junior insiders
  • Note the total dollar value across all cluster transactions, not just the individual amounts
Cluster buys have historically preceded positive announcements and re-ratings. They’re one of the highest-quality signals in the Insider Trades feature.

Using the Sector Heat Map

The Sector Heat Map gives you a bird’s-eye view of where insider activity is concentrated across the entire market. Instead of looking company by company, the heat map shows you which sectors are seeing unusual levels of insider buying or selling right now. Use the heat map to:
  • Identify sectors with outsized buying — if multiple insiders across multiple biotech companies are buying simultaneously, that’s a sector-level signal
  • Spot distribution patterns — heavy insider selling concentrated in one sector can be an early warning sign
  • Generate research ideas — a sector showing strong cluster buy signals gives you a starting list of companies worth investigating further
Click any sector tile to drill down into the individual companies and transactions driving that sector’s activity.

Setting Up Alerts via Watchlists

The fastest way to stay on top of insider activity for companies you follow is to add them to a Watchlist. Once a company is on your watchlist, its insider transactions appear prominently in your filtered news and filing feeds — you won’t have to check the global feed manually. See the Use Watchlists guide for instructions on creating and managing your watchlists.
Insider trading disclosures are informational signals, not guarantees of future price performance. Many factors drive stock prices, and insiders can be — and sometimes are — wrong about their own companies. Nothing on Insighthread constitutes investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making any investment decision.
Pay most attention to open-market purchases (not option exercises or compensation grants) made by C-suite insiders — CEO, CFO, COO, or board chair. The signal becomes significantly stronger when multiple insiders buy simultaneously. These cluster open-market purchases by senior leadership represent some of the highest-conviction data points available in public disclosures.

Research a Stock

Combine insider data with filings, financials, and earnings to build a complete picture of any public company.

Use Watchlists

Add companies to a watchlist so their insider transactions surface automatically in your personalized feed.