Top Insider Buys of Q1 2026: What Corporate Officers Are Buying
When a corporate insider --- a CEO, CFO, director, or 10% owner --- buys shares of their own company on the open market, it sends a signal that no analyst report can replicate. These individuals have access to non-public context about their company’s trajectory, and they are putting their personal capital at risk. Academic research has consistently shown that insider purchases, particularly cluster buys involving multiple insiders at the same company, tend to outperform the broader market over the following 6 to 12 months.
We track every Form 4 filing submitted to the SEC, covering over 270,000 transactions in our database. Here is what the data reveals about Q1 2026.
How We Track Insider Trades
The SEC requires corporate insiders to report their transactions within two business days via Form 4 filings. Our pipeline fetches these filings directly from SEC EDGAR, parses the XML, and cross-references each trade against our database of 3,300+ stocks and 80 tracked hedge fund managers.
What Counts as a Purchase
We focus on open-market purchases only. Option exercises, gifts, and automatic plan transactions are excluded because they carry less informational value. A CEO choosing to write a personal check for $5 million in stock is fundamentally different from exercising pre-scheduled options.
The Numbers: Q1 2026 at a Glance
The first quarter of 2026 saw significant insider buying activity across multiple sectors:
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Total insider purchases tracked | 12,400+ |
| Total purchase value | $4.8B+ |
| Unique companies with insider buys | 2,100+ |
| Average purchase size | $387K |
| Median purchase size | $52K |
| Largest single purchase | $142M |
Sectors Drawing the Most Insider Capital
Not all insider buying is created equal. When insiders across an entire sector are buying simultaneously, it suggests a structural opportunity that the broader market may be underpricing.
| Sector | Total Insider Buy Value | Number of Transactions | Avg Purchase Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technology | $1.2B | 3,100 | $387K |
| Financials | $890M | 2,400 | $371K |
| Healthcare | $620M | 1,800 | $344K |
| Energy | $480M | 980 | $490K |
| Industrials | $340M | 1,200 | $283K |
What Makes an Insider Buy Meaningful
Not every Form 4 filing deserves attention. Through years of tracking this data, we have identified several characteristics that distinguish high-signal insider purchases from noise:
Size Relative to Compensation
A director buying $20,000 in stock when their annual board compensation is $300,000 is less meaningful than a CEO purchasing $2 million when their base salary is $1 million. The key metric is the purchase size relative to the insider’s total compensation and existing holdings.
Cluster Buys
When three or more insiders at the same company buy within a 30-day window, the signal strengthens considerably. This suggests that multiple people with inside knowledge independently decided the stock is undervalued.
Track Record
Some insiders are serial buyers who purchase stock every quarter regardless of valuation. Others buy rarely and only when they see a significant disconnect between price and value. The latter group’s purchases carry more weight.
Where Superinvestors and Insiders Overlap
The most compelling opportunities arise when insider buying coincides with institutional accumulation by the superinvestors we track. When a CEO is buying their own stock and Warren Buffett or Seth Klarman is building a position in the same company through their 13F filings, the convergence of signals is hard to ignore.
Our data shows that stocks appearing in both our insider buy rankings and our hedge fund portfolio tracker have historically outperformed on a risk-adjusted basis over 12-month periods.
Not Investment Advice
This analysis is for informational and educational purposes only. Insider buying is one signal among many, and past patterns do not guarantee future results. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investment decisions.
How to Use This Data
You can explore all insider trading activity on our Insider Trading page, which includes:
- Timeframe filters to view trades from the past day, week, month, or year
- Transaction type filters to isolate purchases from sales
- Minimum amount filters to focus on large, high-conviction trades
- Direct links to each stock’s detail page showing which hedge funds also hold the position
The combination of insider intelligence and institutional ownership data is what makes our platform unique. Individual data points tell a story; combined, they reveal a pattern.