What does a selected insider purchase actually establish?
An insider purchase is a disclosed transaction to investigate in its filing context. EFI's selected feed applies a material-purchase policy to admitted SEC records; appearing in the feed is not evidence of a validated return forecast.
A useful read order
- Read the filing
Check the person, company role, transaction code, purchase size, and linked source evidence.
- Check availability
Separate transaction date from filing and public-availability times.
- Check coverage
Read coverage freshness and unavailable totals before interpreting an empty result.
What the selected feed includes
EFI's feed defaults to the last 90 days and screens identified natural-person company officers and directors. The policy includes CEO purchases of at least $1 million, CFO or director purchases of at least $5 million, or seven-day clusters of at least $2 million across three unique purchase rows and two company insiders.
Funds and outside investors are excluded from this selected feed. A company insider's 10% ownership alone does not exclude them. SEC transaction code P can include open-market and private purchases, so it should not automatically be described as an open-market-only trade.
A filing is not known before publication
The date someone transacted is different from the date the public could read the filing. Historical research must preserve that availability distinction and cannot use a later filing to explain a decision as if it was already known.
Coverage is collected in the background, and page or tool requests read the selected saved feed. Unsupported or incomplete coverage remains explicit. No returned rows can mean no qualifying purchases, unavailable coverage, or a narrower selection; those meanings should not be collapsed.
What this cannot establish
- Purchase-size thresholds are screening policy, not tested expected returns.
- A disclosed purchase does not reveal the insider's complete finances or motive.
- Source coverage and collection time limit what a saved feed can establish.