Intelligent Alerts at StockOcean

This week, we launched intelligent alerts at StockOcean! What does that mean?

Specifically, we’ve been trying to reduce noise and surface signal. Not every Form 4 filing or insider trade is going to be important.

For example, Mark Zuckerberg has been selling millions of dollars of shares almost every single week since 2016. If he sells another few million dollars next week, that’s just normal course of business.

However, you know what would be interesting? If he bought shares instead.

This is known as a Trend Reversal, where an insider who previously engaged in consistent buying or selling, suddenly switches to the opposite behavior. Trend reversals are important to pay attention to because they may signal changes in the insider’s perception of the company’s future prospects or financial health.

We now track Trend Reversals automatically at StockOcean in our Screener Tab.

Here’s a list of some of the latest Trend Reversals in Insiders over the last week:

In addition to Trend Reversals, we also track First Actions. This is when an insider either buys or sells company stock for the first time. This can be important as the insider may have finally developed a strong enough point of view about the business to cause them to either buy or sell the stock.

We also track Insider Re-initiations and Company Re-initiations. An Insider Re-initiation is when an insider starts trading activity again after taking a pause for 1 year+. A Company Re-initiation is when at least one insider in the company starts trading stock again after no trading activity for at least 1 month+.

This is important because a lack of insider trading in a company that consistently sees insider trading can be a signal for potential merger or acquisition activity.

See below for a WSJ article on how Amgen’s acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics was discovered months prior to announcement due to a lack of insider trading activity.

What other intelligent alerts should we include? Let us know by responding to this e-mail!

That’s all for this week, follow us on Twitter for real-time thoughts, subscribe to our newsletter, and sign up on StockOcean for free insider buying and selling alerts.