"Insiders sell for many reasons, but they buy for only one." It's one of the most quoted lines in investing, and it's the reason sites like this one exist. If the CEO spends her own money on her company's stock, she must know something, right?
We wanted to know how often that actually pays off. So we went back through every open-market insider purchase in U.S.-listed stocks since 2020 and checked what happened next.
The short answer
We measured 16,899 insider buying events. Over the 90 days after each one became public, 46% beat the S&P 500. The typical (median) result was -1.6% against the market, and the average was +0.5%.
In other words, following insider buys blindly has been a little worse than a coin flip. That doesn't mean insider buying is meaningless. It means the buy on its own isn't the edge many people assume it is.
How we measured it
We set the rules before looking at any results:
- Only real purchases. Form 4 code P: an insider buying shares on the open market with their own money, $10,000 or more. No stock grants, option exercises or plan-related trades.
- One event per stock per burst. Purchases in the same stock within 14 days count as one event, so a CEO buying five days in a row doesn't count five times.
- The clock starts when you could have known. We measure from the close on the day the last filing became public, not from the insider's own trade date.
- Same days, same yardstick. Each stock's 90-day price change is compared with the S&P 500 (SPY) over exactly the same days.
- Stocks under $3 are left out.
Which setups did best
We grouped every event by three traits: how many insiders bought, whether the CEO or CFO was one of them, and how the stock had moved in the three months before.
| Setup | Cases | Beat the S&P 500 | Median vs. S&P |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3+ insiders buying · no CEO or CFO · stock down 20%+ in 3 months | 278 | 50% | -0.2% |
| 3+ insiders buying · incl. CEO or CFO · stock down 20%+ in 3 months | 531 | 49% | -0.7% |
| 2 insiders buying · incl. CEO or CFO · stock up over 3 months | 416 | 49% | -0.2% |
| 2 insiders buying · no CEO or CFO · stock down 20%+ in 3 months | 408 | 47% | -1.7% |
| 1 insider buying · no CEO or CFO · stock down 0–20% in 3 months | 3,433 | 47% | -1.0% |
The strongest group was 3+ insiders buying, no CEO or CFO, stock down 20%+ in 3 months: 138 of 278 cases beat the market (50%). The weakest was 3+ insiders buying, no CEO or CFO, stock down 0–20% in 3 months, at 40%. A pattern worth noticing: the typical stock went up (+3.0% over 90 days). It just went up less than the S&P 500 did over the same days. Since 2020, the index itself has been a tough benchmark to beat.
Why the average and the median disagree
The average result (+0.5%) is better than the median (-1.6%). That gap comes from the tails: a small number of huge winners pull the average up, while the typical buy lands a little behind the market. If you follow insider buys, you're mostly hoping to catch one of those rare big moves, not a steady edge.
It depends a lot on the year
| Year of the buy | Cases | Beat the S&P 500 |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2,538 | 54% |
| 2021 | 2,136 | 42% |
| 2022 | 2,876 | 51% |
| 2023 | 2,686 | 38% |
| 2024 | 2,337 | 45% |
| 2025 | 2,739 | 44% |
| 2026 | 1,587 | 45% |
The market's mood matters as much as the insider's. One likely reason: most insider buying happens in smaller companies, so years when small stocks lag the big ones are hard on insider buys.
What this means if you follow insider buys
- Treat a purchase as a reason to look, not a reason to buy. On its own, it's roughly a coin flip against the index.
- Check the setup. Some combinations have done better than others. Every stock page on InsiderPrint now shows how past setups like its latest insider buying turned out.
- Mind the limits. Companies that were later delisted often drop out of the price data, which makes these numbers look somewhat better than reality. Returns are price-only, before costs and dividends.
You can try the combinations yourself on the Setup Odds page: pick the traits and see how past cases did.
This is research from public SEC filings and market prices, not investment advice.