Stocks with the most insider buying and selling

Insider buyers and sellers have stepped back since the stock rally in 2023 unfolded, according to the Citi equity team.

"Interestingly, both (buying and selling) have had some relationship to index level forward performance historically," strategist Scott Chronert wrote in a note. Over "the last ten years there was a decent +0.51 correlation between the number of insider buyers and 12M forward returns."

"As for the number of insider sellers, there is some evidence that their timing is good but the correlation is weaker at -0.17," Chronert said. "Taken together, with more weight on the insider buying measure, there is a mixed signal that generally implies lower but positive forward return expectations."

Moving down to single stock level, the team screened "for those companies with the largest amount of insider buying/selling as a percentage of market cap over the past 6 months."

"To be clear, this data reflects only open market buys/sales," Chronert said. "Vesting or new grants of stock comp are not included as a buy. However, selling of vested stock is included as a sale. This explains the higher percentages of market cap for sales vs buys."

"In trying to assess the relevance of this data, the trend or deviation from average is probably more important than the absolute number," he said. "In any event, the data is quite interesting. In particular, note that most of the higher insider buys are in sectors outside of Tech (XLK), which stands in contrast to many of the top sales."

Top 20 inside buyers

1. VF Corp (VFC) insider purchases percentage of market cap 0.033%
2. Carnival Corp (CCL) 0.029%
3. Enphase Energy (ENPH) 0.027%
4. DENTSPLY SIRONA (XRAY) 0.013%
5. Allegion (ALLE) 0.012%
6. Air Products and Chemicals (APD) 0.010%
7. Northern Trust (NTRS) 0.010%
8. Charles River Laboratories (CRL) 0.010%
9. AES (AES) 0.009%
10. Align Technology (ALGN) 0.009%
11. Insulet (PODD) 0.009%
12. Everest Group (EG) 0.009%
13. Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) 0.008%
14. CenterPoint Energy (CNP) 0.008%
15. Caesars Entertainment (CZR) 0.007%
16. Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB) 0.006%
17. FMC (FMC) 0.006%
18. Zions Bancorp (ZION) 0.005%
19. Illumina (ILMN) 0.004%
20. Qorvo (QRVO) 0.004%

Top 20 inside sellers

1. NVR (NVR) insider sales percentage of market cap -0.922%
2. Airbnb (ABNB) -0.567%
3. Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) -0.471%
4. Amazon.com (AMZN) -0.467%
5. Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) -0.405%
6. Palo Alto Networks (PANW) -0.347%
7. Walmart (WMT) -0.331%
8. Textron (TXT) -0.329%
9. Teledyne Technologies (TDY) -0.310%
10. Tyler Technologies (TYL) -0.291%
11. Salesforce (CRM) -0.288%
12. Jabil (JBL) -0.278%
13. Charter Communications (CHTR) -0.270%
14. Snap-on (SNA) -0.236%
15. SBA Communications (SBAC) -0.225%
16. Seagate Technology (STX) -0.222%
17. Loews (L) -0.222%
18. AutoZone (AZO) -0.203%
19. Motorola Solutions (MSI) -0.188%
20. FactSet Research (FDS) -0.176%