Insider buying pays in sell-offs, not in calm markets
Copying every opportunistic insider purchase barely beats small caps when the market is calm. The same trades beat the market clearly when it is being sold off.
- Trades: every open-market insider purchase reported to the SEC on Form 4 from 2006 onward that passes our routine-versus-opportunistic filter; for this piece, every open-market purchase that passes the routine-vs-opportunistic filter.
- Entry: first session after the filing became public. Held 63 trading days (about three months).
- Benchmark: IWM (small caps), because insider-buy candidates skew small and cheap; beating the S&P alone would just be that tilt.
- Market state: stress = SPY at least 10% below its trailing 1-year high on the entry day; calm otherwise.
- Statistics: clustered by company (one vote per company) — five insiders buying the same stock in the same week count once. Cells under 40 trades or 15 companies are shown but greyed. No trading costs deducted.
- What is excluded: companies without a ten-year price history (delisted names are the main gap; see the survivorship note on the evidence page).
Three-month excess return versus small caps for any opportunistic buys made during sell-offs, by sector. Sectors with too few trades omitted from the chart, shown in the table.
| Sector (SEC industry group) | In sell-offs | In calm markets | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medical devices | +23.0 pts n 340 · t 2.8 | +3.6 pts n 1,322 · t 0.7 | Sell-offs only |
| Transport & logistics | +16.4 pts n 172 · t 1.8 | +4.1 pts n 603 · t 2.0 | No reliable edge |
| Other | +10.8 pts n 928 · t 2.7 | +1.9 pts n 1,734 · t 0.9 | Sell-offs only |
| Construction | +10.2 pts n 113 · t 3.5 | −6.0 pts n 429 · t -1.1 | Sell-offs only; loses in calm |
| Tech hardware & semis | +9.0 pts n 474 · t 3.2 | −2.6 pts n 1,300 · t -2.6 | Sell-offs only; loses in calm |
| Mining & metals | +7.6 pts n 118 · t 1.3 | −1.7 pts n 466 · t -0.9 | Too few trades to say |
| Retail & consumer | +7.6 pts n 694 · t 3.4 | +1.7 pts n 2,116 · t 1.9 | Sell-offs only |
| Energy | +7.4 pts n 644 · t 2.7 | −1.5 pts n 1,713 · t -2.0 | Sell-offs only; loses in calm |
| Biotech & pharma | +6.5 pts n 575 · t 1.9 | +4.9 pts n 1,809 · t 1.5 | No reliable edge |
| Healthcare services | +6.3 pts n 72 · t 1.0 | +1.2 pts n 343 · t 2.1 | Too few trades to say |
| Food, drink & tobacco | +5.6 pts n 84 · t 0.4 | +1.9 pts n 334 · t 0.9 | Too few trades to say |
| Telecom & media | +5.6 pts n 70 · t 1.1 | −2.5 pts n 504 · t 0.1 | Too few trades to say |
| Software & IT services | +5.4 pts n 592 · t 1.6 | +0.4 pts n 1,414 · t 0.5 | No reliable edge |
| Industrials & manufacturing | +4.9 pts n 2,366 · t 4.2 | +2.9 pts n 5,945 · t 2.2 | Works in both states |
| Finance & real estate | +4.4 pts n 367 · t 0.8 | +0.6 pts n 1,318 · t 0.3 | No reliable edge |
| REITs | +3.8 pts n 1,018 · t 0.6 | +1.3 pts n 2,445 · t 0.4 | No reliable edge |
| Services | +2.2 pts n 1,044 · t 1.9 | +2.2 pts n 2,601 · t 1.0 | No reliable edge |
| Insurance | +1.4 pts n 663 · t -0.4 | +1.2 pts n 1,473 · t 1.2 | No reliable edge |
| Utilities | +0.9 pts n 629 · t 0.6 | +0.6 pts n 1,893 · t -0.1 | No reliable edge |
| Banks | −1.0 pts n 5,034 · t 0.2 | +1.5 pts n 16,799 · t 4.9 | Calm markets only |
t is the clustered t-statistic: above 2 means the result is unlikely to be luck; above 3, very unlikely. "n" is trades.
Market state now: NORMAL — the S&P 500 is 3.1% below its one-year high (as of 2026-09-16). The calm column above is the one that applies today; the sell-off numbers are what to expect if conditions change.
Sectors under pressure right now (their own ETF is in a drawdown):
Buys in the last 45 days that match this definition (newest first, only names we have a page for):
A match is a candidate, not a recommendation: the table above says what this definition has done in this market state and sector on average.
SAVNG is an educational research publication, not a Registered Investment Adviser. Everything here is general-circulation information produced by an automated pipeline — the same for every reader — and is not personalized investment advice, an offer, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Any performance figure is hypothetical; past performance does not predict future results. Details.
Published by SAVNG Research. Every figure on this page is read from the study data at render time; if the study changes, the page changes with it.