An insider trade occurs when a corporate executive (such as a CEO, CFO or COO) that has non-public information about a company buys or sells shares of that company's stock. Company insiders are required by law to regularly report their stock purchases and sales to the SEC.
Tracking a company's insider trades is a metric that can be used to identify the direction that the company's executives believes that the company is headed. If a number of insiders purchase more shares of their company, they may believe that the company will have strong future earnings and that the share price will increase in the near future.
For example, if Microsoft's CEO, CFO and COO all recently purchased additional shares of Microsoft stock, that would be an indication that there could be unreported news that may positively effect Microsoft's stock price in the near future.
This slideshow lists the 15 companies that have had the highest levels of insider buying within the last 180 days.
Click the "
Continue to Slide #1" button view the first stock.
