Insider Trades – Cumulative tell us the cumulative number of shares traded by insiders of the company over a given time period as a % of total shares outstanding. We’ve added Insider Trades – 1M, 3M, 6M cumulative as screener filters. For example, Insider Trades – 3M Cumulative is calculated by summing up the number of shares traded in all the insider trades that have occurred in the past 3 months, then dividing it by the total number of shares outstanding and finally multiplying it by 100 to arrive at a percentage value.
An insider is someone with either access to valuable non-public information about a corporation or ownership of stock equaling more than 10% of a firm’s equity. The kind of information found in filings is extremely valuable to individual investors. For example, if insiders are buying shares in their own companies, they might know something that normal investors do not. The insider might buy because they see great potential, the possibility for merger or acquisition in the future, or simply because they think their stock is undervalued. While the data are important, just remember that large companies might have hundreds of insiders, which means that trying to determine a pattern can be difficult.