Nobody knows stocks better than directors that run the company. They have intimate knowledge of a firm’s future prospects and a huge information advantage over private investors. What if you could follow director trades to piggyback their insights? Now you can. The latest advancements on the platform enable investors to track Global director trades and potentially profit from director deals across the world. Until recently, Stockopedia only provided director deals data for UK stocks. The same data is now available for all regions in the Stockopedia coverage universe.

Track director buying and selling

Subscribers will be familiar with the Accounts tab on StockReports; it enables you to read financial statements, track dividends and analyse major shareholdings. By clicking on director dealings, under the same tab, you will be taken to a page where it is possible to keep on top of directors' trades and conduct further due diligence before making an investment decision.

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The director deals page shows a table with the following columns:

  • The date when the transaction went through the market - i.e. not the date the trade was announced to the public.
  • The name of the director.
  • The type of trade - e.g. buy or sell.
  • Volume refers to the number of shares traded.
  • The price at which shares were traded.
  • Value is the total value of the transaction - i.e. volume multiplied by price.
  • % Held displays the proportion of shares, as a percentage of market cap, held by the director after the transaction.

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It is worth mentioning that a table row will not be present:

  • if the trade is below £1000 in value;
  • if the transaction is ‘within’ a holding - e.g. director simply transfers the same stock position from one brokerage account to a different account;
  • if the trade was by a major shareholder who is not an insider (although these are reported in Canada and US);
  • if the company is based in Taiwan or Japan, where directors are not obliged to disclose transactions.

How Can I Use This Data?

Not all director dealings are meaningful signals. Here are four guiding principles that will help you benefit from this data

  1. Pay More Attention to Buying: Insider ‘sells’ are often made for personal reasons rather than concerns for the company’s prospects. For instance, a director may simply be buying a house. As Peter Lynch explained in One Up on Wall Street:…

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