Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew of a place that I could do scans for insider activity over like a 5 year period. I currently use thompsonfn, and it's decent if you enter in single tickers, but I want to be able to scan the entire market over a longer time period and look for consistent insider activities from more than one insider. Does anyone have any advice?
http://www.smartmoney.com/eqsnaps/index.cfm?story=insiders&symbol=MSFT&fk=4563 maybe smartmoney.com will be of help. The site navigation is confusing as hell. This link is to MSFT's info. To change the stock, go to the bottom, put in a new symbol and click Submit, then when the new page comes up click on the far right tab "Insiders." http://www.moneycentral.com/investor/invsub/insider/trans.asp msn has an insider info page, but it looks like they only go back one year.
Speaking of insider trading. If memory serves me correctly ? insiders are only required to report their stock transactions every six months. One of the new laws that may come out of the Enron hearings is that they may soon be required to report within a few business days. I think it should be the same day or the next day. Companies are required to inform stockholders of any major events that will effect the business but insiders can often see these events coming long before they actually occur. For instance, their salesmen may have started running into a competitors salesmen at one or several of their major accounts frequently over the last few months. Lately the accounts orders may have begun to drop off with no explanation and the people in the customers purchasing dept may have begun to be a little stand-offish or tight-lipped. They may have started to complain a bit about pricing or poor service, high service contract costs or warranty handling. Any insider that knows what the heck they're doing can tell that they are going to loose this major customer weeks or MONTHS before it actually happens. Should the insider be able to trade quietly (in secret) off of this information? NO. But they do. When they do trade off of it the rest of the stockholders, you and me, ought to know about it in a timely manner. IMO, this practice is front-running plain and simple. I wonder if any of the ENRON insiders actually SHORTED the stock in seperate accounts? Or had friends and relatives that did it for them? The potential for abuse is mind boggling.
No, i think you are wrong. Insiders have to report their transactions by the 10th of the following month. Most of them do, some delay for some reasons and seem to be getting away with it. Fact is that publication of insider trading sells around the 9, 10,11,12 and 13 of each month. There is some delay by the wire service to report all the data. Oliver
Wallstreetcity has a nice free feature for insider trading by industry etc... If you really want to get serious about insidertrading check the wire services such as www.washserv.com or www.lanceranalytics.com or http://library.dialog.com/bluesheets/html/bl0549.html#RT They cost serious money to subscribe to, but you get real value for the money, ie good trade ideas which provide an nice return on your investment for subscribing to the services. Oliver
If insiders ARE only required to report once a month, and some delay, it seems that the information wouldn't have much value except for very long timeframes. If the insiders are trading INSIDE of those long timeframes then the information has No value and they can frontrun. Information = money. There is definately a disadvantage for the outsider. Maybe it ought to be lessened.
I would sugest to anyone interested in the subject reading the following paper: http://papers.nber.org/papers/W6913 Mirroring insider trading on a 6month timescale is profitable. In the short term, it depends. But I can assure you can make a nice 2 day return in shares of a company where insiders have been buying in a cluster and in size. On the day that info will become public, you can daytrade these stocks on the long side. Oliver
I have looked at these sites, but it's not yet what I'm looking for. I believe that especially in turnaround situations, insiders know at what point the stock either makes it or doesn't. Usually they know this way before the street ever will. I have a list of dozens of stocks that went from 2 to double digits within 36 months after a "MASSIVE" insider episode as I call them. I am thinking strictly for longer term things to play turnarounds. Does anyone know how I can do a scan that would essentially say: "search for stocks under $5 a share where at least 5 insiders have participated in at least 15 insider buy transactions in the last 18 months"
Send me your criteria. I have a database for ALL insider transactions in excel (purchases only). I can provide you with an output for your criteria. I can't share the database though because I have only a personal subscription to the data. Oliver
New rule basically says that insiders must disclose transactions totaling >$100,000 within 2 days. It's in effect now and about to be voted on to make permanent. http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/33-8090.htm