Chief executives buying their own stock is one of the few things in this market that isn't an opinion.
Insiders sell for a hundred reasons. School fees, a divorce, a house in Montana, a diversification rule their adviser insisted on. That is why selling tells you almost nothing.
Buying is narrower. There is really only one reason to put your own money into your own company at the market price, and everyone involved knows it.
Nobody is better informed.
A chief financial officer knows roughly what the quarter looks like about six weeks before you do. That is not a scandal, it is the job. When someone with that view decides to increase their stake, they are acting on the clearest picture of the business that exists anywhere.
These shares were bought, not handed over.
An option grant is compensation. A vesting award is a calendar entry. A purchase on the open market means somebody paid the going price on the same screen you would use, and now carries the whole of the downside.
Nothing scheduled counts here.
Executives can set up a plan that buys or sells automatically on dates chosen months in advance, and those trades tell you what the person thought last winter. We are not interested in last winter. Every purchase we show was decided in the moment, by someone who could just as easily have done nothing.