Short answer: his filings don't say why. Form 4 reports what an insider bought, at what price and when, never the reason. What the filings do show is unusual: Eric Sprott, a well-known precious-metals investor and a 10% owner of Hycroft Mining (HYMC), kept buying for ten straight months, from about $3 a share to almost $48, adding well over $150 million of stock. Here is the full record from the SEC filings, and how it turned out so far.
Every purchase, from the filings
The SEC's quarterly insider data sets show the first two large purchases, and the individual Form 4 filings show the rest with exact prices:
| Filed | Shares | Price paid | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 17, 2025 | – | stock near $3 | about $22.2M |
| Sep 12, 2025 | – | stock near $6 | about $40.0M |
| Oct 16, 2025 | 7,690,000 | $6.50 | $50.0M |
| Nov 19, 2025 | 400,000 | $10.37 | $4.1M |
| Dec 5, 2025 | 2,340,824 | $10.30 | $24.1M |
| Dec 18, 2025 | 220,000 | $14.60 | $3.2M |
| Dec 30, 2025 | 700,000 (4 trades) | $22.70–$25.03 | $16.5M |
| Jan 9, 2026 | 125,000 (2 trades) | $26.08–$27.05 | $3.3M |
| Mar 5, 2026 | 100,000 | $47.58 | $4.8M |
| Apr 10, 2026 | 200,000 (2 trades) | $38.28–$39.06 | $7.7M |
A second buyer appears in the same months: 2176423 Ontario Ltd., also reporting as a 10% owner. Its share counts and Sprott's move together as one running total in the filings (for example 25.2 million shares after the October 2025 buy, 37.4 million by late April 2026), so they appear to be the same holding. That company reported another 16 purchases between November 2025 and April 2026, at prices from $8.07 to $49.96.
On December 5, 2025, American Multi-Cinema (AMC), an earlier large holder, reported disposing of 2,340,824 shares, the same day Sprott reported buying exactly 2,340,824 shares at $10.30. The matching share count suggests he bought that block of AMC's stake directly.
What the stock did
- Before: about $3 a share in June 2025.
- Peak: $55.74 on March 2, 2026, more than 15 times the June 2025 price.
- Now: $15.44 at the close on October 23, 2026, about 72% below the peak.
Sprott's early buys (June to December 2025, mostly under $15) are far above water. His last purchases, at $47.58 in March and around $38–39 in April 2026, are well below it.
What the other insiders did
While the 10% owner was buying, company executives were selling:
- In June 2026, the CEO, the CFO, the general counsel and a senior vice president all sold shares in the same week, at about $26–$31.
- The general manager and the general counsel also sold smaller amounts earlier, in October and December 2025 and March 2026.
Executives sell for many reasons (taxes, diversification, planned sales), so on its own that isn't a signal. But it is the opposite of the "insiders are buying" story the headline buys suggest.
So what does this tell us?
- A big holder buying on the way up is different from an executive buying on a dip. Sprott bought more as the price rose. That's a conviction bet by an outside investor, not a CEO spotting a bargain in his own company.
- Timing mattered more than conviction. The same investor's early buys are worth well over twice what he paid; the late ones are down about 60–70%.
- Across all insider buys, conviction isn't enough. We measured 16,899 insider buying events since 2020: buys of $1 million or more beat the S&P 500 over the next 90 days only about 44% of the time, slightly less often than smaller buys. See the full numbers on Setup Odds and the Insider Gauge.
See every HYMC insider trade on the HYMC page.
Data: SEC Form 4 filings and SEC insider transaction data sets; prices are end-of-day closes. This is a record of public filings, not a recommendation to buy or sell HYMC or any security.