An insider trade occurs when a corporate executive (such as a CEO, CFO or COO) that has non-public information about a company buys or sells shares of that company's stock. Company insiders are required by law to regularly report their stock purchases and sales to the SEC.
Tracking a company's insider trades is a metric that can be used to identify the direction that the company's executives believes that the company is headed. If a number of insiders sell shares of their company, they may believe that the company will have weak future earnings and that the share price will decline in the near future.
For example, if Microsoft's CEO, CFO and COO all recently sold shares of Microsoft stock, that would be an indication that there could be unreported news that may negatively effect Microsoft's stock price in the near future.
This slideshow lists the 12 companies that have had the highest levels of insider buying within the last 180 days.
