Companies With Significant Insider Buying Activity 2025

June 17, 2026 · 13 min read

For decades, sophisticated investors have monitored companies with significant insider buying activity as a leading indicator of undervaluation, upcoming catalysts, or improving business fundamentals. When CEOs, CFOs, directors, and 10%+ shareholders put their own capital to work in open-market purchases, they are sending the market a costly, credible signal — one that academic studies repeatedly link to superior forward returns.

This guide unpacks how to identify, evaluate, and act on companies with significant insider buying activity in 2025. We'll cover the data sources professionals use, the most notable recent insider purchases, the academic evidence behind the strategy, and how to integrate insider signals into a disciplined value or event-driven framework.

Why Companies With Significant Insider Buying Activity Outperform

The thesis is straightforward: corporate insiders possess superior, real-time information about their company's pipeline, margins, customer demand, and competitive position. When they choose to buy with personal capital — rather than receive stock through options or grants — that decision carries information weight that cannot be replicated by sell-side analysts or external models.

A 2022 Harvard Business School study found that companies with significant insider buying activity outperformed the market by approximately 6% annually over the subsequent three years. This is consistent with earlier work by Nejat Seyhun and others demonstrating that insider purchase signals are among the most persistent anomalies in finance.

Three behavioral patterns make insider buying particularly powerful:

• Contrarian timing: Insiders tend to buy when the broader market is selling — adding shares during drawdowns rather than rallies.
• Value orientation: Aggregate insider activity skews toward low P/E, beaten-down names and away from richly valued momentum stocks.
• Cluster conviction: When three or more executives buy within a 90-day window, the signal strengthens materially, particularly at small and mid-cap companies with limited analyst coverage.

For hedge fund managers and individual investors alike, this creates a repeatable framework: screen for companies with significant insider buying activity, filter for cluster patterns and dollar size, then apply fundamental analysis to separate true bargains from value traps. Resources like Insider Monkey's insider trading database make this screening process accessible to investors who don't have Bloomberg terminals.

Recent Companies With Significant Insider Buying Activity

The current landscape of companies with significant insider buying activity reflects a tilt toward cyclical value, special situations, and overlooked small/mid-caps. Below are the most notable recent open-market purchases drawn from Form 4 filings tracked by Fintel and HedgeFollow.

Large-Cap and Mid-Cap Standouts

• MGM Resorts (MGM): A single insider transaction of 450,000 shares at an average price of $37.13 — roughly $16.7 million deployed. The buy comes amid concerns over Las Vegas Strip demand and signals executive conviction in normalized cash flow.
• Palo Alto Networks (PANW): Two transactions totaling 68,085 shares at $147.18, approximately $10 million. Notable in a cybersecurity space where insider buying has been rare.
• Fortune Brands Innovations (FBIN): Approximately $13 million in insider purchases, a housing-cycle-linked consumer name where executives appear to be calling a cyclical bottom.
• Knot Offshore Partners (KNOP): Roughly $25 million in insider buys — one of the largest concentrated bets in the income/energy shipping space.

Small-Cap and Special-Situation Buys

• Borr Drilling (BORR): 750,000 shares purchased at $5.25, approximately $3.9 million — an offshore drilling cyclical with insider conviction.
• Sol-Gel Technologies (SLGL): 39,665 shares for $2.86 million across two trades — meaningful for a micro-cap biotech.
• i-80 Gold (IAUX): Over 1 million shares at ~$1.40, totaling $1.41 million in a junior mining name.
• Artiva Biotherapeutics (ARTV): $8.9 million in insider buying, an unusually high dollar amount for a small-cap biotech.
• Six Flags (FUN): Multi-million-dollar insider purchase volume in the leisure/theme park sector post-merger.

How to Identify Companies With Significant Insider Buying Activity

Not every insider buy is meaningful. To separate signal from noise, professional investors apply a layered filtering process. Here's a practical workflow:

1. Filter for open-market purchases only. Ignore option exercises, grants, and 10b5-1 plan transactions where possible — these are typically compensation-driven, not conviction-driven.
2. Set a dollar threshold. For large-caps, focus on buys above $1 million; for small-caps, $100,000+ from a single insider can be meaningful, especially relative to their reported net worth.
3. Look for cluster patterns. Three or more insiders buying within 90 days is the classic Citibank-identified pattern that historically precedes outperformance.
4. Weight by role. CEO and CFO buys carry more information weight than independent director purchases, since they have the deepest operational visibility.
5. Cross-check with fundamentals. Pair the insider signal with valuation screens (low P/E, low EV/EBITDA, high free cash flow yield) to avoid value traps.
6. Monitor follow-through. A single buy followed by silence is weaker than sustained accumulation over multiple quarters.

Investors looking to systematize this approach can leverage Insider Monkey's hedge fund tracking tools alongside insider data to find names where smart money and corporate insiders are aligned — historically the highest-conviction setup.

Comparing Top Recent Insider Buys

The table below summarizes the largest recent companies with significant insider buying activity, organized by sector and dollar size to help investors prioritize research.

Sector Patterns Among Companies With Significant Insider Buying Activity

One of the most useful applications of insider data is sector-level analysis. When companies with significant insider buying activity cluster within a single industry, it often signals an industry-wide inflection that hasn't yet been priced in by the broader market.

Energy and Shipping

The concentration of insider buying at Knot Offshore Partners and Borr Drilling reflects a broader insider view that offshore energy infrastructure remains undervalued relative to long-term oil services demand. These are capital-intensive businesses where executives have visibility into multi-year contract pipelines that public markets often discount excessively.

Consumer Cyclicals

MGM Resorts, Six Flags, and Fortune Brands Innovations represent a clear cyclical thesis: insiders appear to be positioning for normalization in consumer discretionary spending. Housing-linked names like FBIN typically see insider accumulation near cycle troughs, when public sentiment is most negative.

Biotech and Healthcare

Small-cap biotech insider buying — like Artiva Biotherapeutics, Sol-Gel Technologies, and Tempest Therapeutics — often correlates with upcoming clinical catalysts or strategic financing events. These are higher-variance bets but historically among the highest-return insider signals when filtered properly.

Cybersecurity

Palo Alto Networks stands out as a rare insider buy in a sector where executives have historically been net sellers. When companies with significant insider buying activity emerge in high-multiple growth sectors, the signal is often stronger because it cuts against the prevailing insider sell pattern.

Integrating Insider Signals Into Your Investment Process

For hedge fund managers and serious individual investors, the goal isn't to blindly mirror every insider buy — it's to use companies with significant insider buying activity as a high-quality idea-generation funnel. Here's how leading practitioners integrate the signal:

Value Strategies

Combine insider buying with traditional value screens — low P/E, P/B, or EV/EBITDA. The intersection of statistical cheapness and insider conviction is historically one of the most reliable long setups, particularly in small and mid-caps where the market is slower to recognize fundamental shifts.

Event-Driven Strategies

Insider buying often precedes catalysts: spinoffs, restructurings, activist campaigns, or strategic reviews. Cross-referencing insider activity with corporate event calendars can surface asymmetric setups before they become consensus trades.

Quality and Compounders

Even high-quality compounders occasionally see insider accumulation during temporary drawdowns. These setups — buying great businesses when insiders are signaling that the bad news is overblown — have historically produced strong risk-adjusted returns.

For more in-depth analysis, Insider Monkey's research articles regularly highlight specific companies with significant insider buying activity and the underlying investment theses driving them.

Risks and Limitations of Following Insider Buys

While companies with significant insider buying activity historically outperform, the strategy is not without risks. Investors should be aware of several pitfalls:

• Value traps: Insiders can be wrong about their own companies, particularly in structurally declining industries.
• Signaling buys: Some executives buy small amounts purely to send a public signal during stock weakness — these are often less informative than larger, quieter accumulations.
• Sector concentration risk: Insider buying often clusters in cyclical or distressed sectors, which can underperform for extended periods before mean-reverting.
• Liquidity in small-caps: The strongest signals are often in small, illiquid names where executing meaningful positions can be difficult for larger investors.
• Timing uncertainty: Even when the directional call is correct, the timing can lag by 6-18 months, requiring patience and position sizing discipline.

The Harvard Business School research showing 6% annual outperformance is measured over three-year holding periods — short-term traders following insider buys often see disappointing results because the signal is fundamentally a medium-term value indicator, not a momentum trigger.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion: Turning Insider Signals Into Investment Edge

Tracking companies with significant insider buying activity remains one of the most durable, evidence-backed approaches to generating investment ideas. The combination of legal disclosure requirements, behavioral economics, and decades of academic research makes insider buying a uniquely powerful signal — one that has consistently outperformed broad market benchmarks when applied with discipline.

The most successful investors don't treat insider buying as a standalone trigger. They use it as the starting point for deeper fundamental analysis, weighting clusters, role seniority, and dollar size against valuation and catalyst assessment. Done well, this approach surfaces opportunities long before they become consensus.

Whether you're an individual investor building a long-term portfolio or a hedge fund manager hunting for asymmetric setups, integrating insider data into your process is no longer optional — it's table stakes. Start tracking companies with significant insider buying activity on Insider Monkey today, and turn the smart money's most timely signal into your investment edge.