What the Top 50 should look like on the page
A profiles article needs names. It also needs restraint. Once the live query is run, the ranking should present the top 50 insiders by 3-year buy hit rate, subject to the minimum-five-buys filter, with company names and enough context to stop the list becoming a hall of fame for statistical accidents.
Recommended columns
For each insider, include:
- Rank
- Insider name
- Primary company
- Role at time of most recent qualifying buy
- Number of qualifying buys in the 3-year window
- Hit rate
- Median 90-day return after buys
- Total disclosed value of qualifying buys
- Most recent buy date
- Sector
- Country or primary listing market
If an insider traded across multiple issuers in the period, the article should either assign a primary company based on the most recent or most frequent issuer, or split the person into separate insider-issuer rows. The latter is usually cleaner.
Names plus companies, but not without context
A leaderboard row that reads "Jane Doe, ABC SA, 80%, 5 buys" is not enough. The profile note should tell the reader what kind of insider this is. Founder-chair? CFO? Independent director? Turnaround CEO? Family holding vehicle? These distinctions matter because information sets and incentives differ.
A founder with concentrated wealth and operational control is not the same signal as a non-executive director making periodic purchases. Both can be informative. They should not be treated as interchangeable.
A model row, because blank spaces are honest
Since the live query was not provided, the only responsible way to show the table structure is as a template. That is less glamorous than a fabricated ranking and more useful than pretending otherwise.
| Rank |
Insider |
Company |
Role |
Qualifying buys, 3Y |
Hit rate |
Median 90D return |
Total buy value |
Last buy date |
Market |
| 1 |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
| 2 |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
| 3 |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
n/a |
It is not pretty. It is accurate.
The caveats that separate a leaderboard from a parlour trick
Every ranking in this category should come with caveats prominent enough to annoy the marketing department.
Small samples create fake legends
Suppose an insider bought five times, all during a sector panic, and all five trades were followed by a relief rally. That person will rank highly. The result may reflect genuine timing skill. It may also reflect the fact that many cyclicals rebound after panic selling. Without a benchmark and some sector control, the leaderboard will reward courage, beta, and luck in unknown proportions.
Role changes and issuer events contaminate histories
An executive can move from one company to another during the 3-year window. A company can be acquired. A spin-off can change the return path. A rights issue can alter the economics of subsequent purchases. If these edge cases are not handled consistently, your table becomes a scrapbook of exceptions.
Buys are more informative than sells, but not always for the same reason
Academic literature has long found that insider purchases tend to be more informative than insider sales. Sales are often driven by diversification, tax, or liquidity needs. Buys involve putting more personal capital into the same risk already tied to the insider's career. That asymmetry is real. It does not mean every buy is a signal. Some are symbolic, some are board optics, some are confidence theatre at exactly the moment confidence is required.
Price impact and liquidity can flatter outcomes
In smaller names, insider buying itself can attract attention and tighten the register. If the stock rallies after disclosure, part of the measured "success" may be the market responding to the signal rather than the insider foreseeing fundamentals. From a trading perspective, that distinction may not matter. From an attribution perspective, it does.
How to read the eventual Top 50 without embarrassing yourself
A leaderboard is a starting point, not a portfolio.
Look for repeat behaviour, not just rank
The most interesting insiders are not necessarily those at the top of the table. They are those whose purchase patterns are coherent across time and circumstances. Do they buy after earnings disappointments but before guidance stabilises? Do they add in tranches during industry-wide stress? Do they buy only when valuation is compressed relative to history? Pattern beats percentile.
Separate conviction from ceremony
Some boards expect directors to buy stock after joining or during periods of scrutiny. Those purchases can be sincere and still uninformative. The tell is often size relative to compensation and existing holdings. A purchase that changes economic exposure is different from one that decorates a governance slide.
Compare within sectors and market caps
A 70% hit rate in volatile small-cap biotech is not the same animal as a 70% hit rate in a regulated utility. Sector structure, liquidity, and event cadence all affect the opportunity set. A good article can include sector tags and perhaps mini-leaderboards by industry. A better one will resist claiming that all hits are created equal.
Use the names as a watchlist for future filings
Profiles become useful when they point forward. Once you know which insiders have a credible record, future buys by those individuals deserve immediate attention. That is the practical value of the ranking. Not "copy every trade", but "know whose filings earn a second look".
Editorial standard for this specific article
Because the requested angle explicitly asks for "Top 50 insiders by 3-year batting average" with "names + companies", it is worth stating the publication standard plainly.
What we can say now
We can define the metric, state the filter of minimum five buys, explain the likely distortions, and specify the output fields required for publication. We can also note that the source corpus contains 162,000 filings, which is ample for a serious leaderboard once the article-specific extraction is run.
What we cannot say now
We cannot publish the actual top 50 names, companies, hit rates, or rankings because no live query output was supplied. Any such list would be invented. Invented rankings are very popular on the internet. They are less popular in journals that expect to be read by people who can count.
The exact query choices that should be locked before publication
To turn this into a finished profiles piece, the data team should confirm:
- Jurisdiction scope, for example global, Europe only, or France only.
- Eligible transaction codes, especially treatment of derivatives and plan trades.
- Event de-duplication rule.
- Forward-return horizon, for example 30D, 90D, or 180D.
- Benchmark rule, absolute positive return or excess return versus market or sector.
- Insider identity resolution across issuers and spelling variants.
- Currency normalisation for disclosed transaction values.
- Handling of delistings, mergers, and suspended securities.
Once those are fixed, the article can be populated with actual names and company profiles in a way that survives contact with an auditor, an issuer, and a sceptical reader. A rare trifecta.
What a finished version should add once the data arrive
The final published piece should not stop at the ranking table. It should include short profile capsules for perhaps the top 10 to 15 insiders, each around 100 to 150 words, covering role, company context, buying pattern, and one caveat. For example:
- whether the buys clustered around a capital raise,
- whether the insider is a founder or hired executive,
- whether the company sits in a sector with high rebound propensity,
- whether the purchase sizes increased over time,
- whether the person has a longer history outside the 3-year window.
If the data support it, a small time-series block showing the count of qualifying buys by year would also help readers understand whether the leaderboard is built from a broad opportunity set or from one crisis-heavy interval.
The article should also consider a companion chart, not necessarily in the same piece, showing how hit rate changes as the minimum-buy threshold rises from 1 to 3 to 5 to 10. If the names at the top remain stable as the threshold tightens, confidence improves. If the leaderboard reshuffles violently, the "top 50" is probably a top 50 of who happened to be active during a convenient patch of volatility.
That is the real editorial question. Not who ranks first, but whether first place means anything durable.
The next concrete step is simple: run the article-specific query with the minimum-five-buys filter, lock the event definition and benchmark, then publish the top 50 with sample sizes and company context attached. The open question is the one that matters more than the rank itself, namely whether the same names still dominate once clustered buys are collapsed and returns are measured against sector benchmarks rather than a forgiving rising market.