Well-Timed Gifts? How Stocks Do After Insiders Give Shares Away

Why gifts are interesting

When an insider gives shares to a charity, a family foundation or a relative, they report it on Form 4 with transaction code G. A gift to charity lets the giver deduct the shares' market value on the day of the gift. That creates an incentive: the higher the price on the gift date, the bigger the tax deduction. Until 2023 insiders could report gifts months later on an annual Form 5; SEC rules that took effect that year require a Form 4 within two business days, which is what makes a study like this possible. Gifts still get far less attention than sales, because no money changes hands.

Academic studies have found that this matters. In "Deductio ad absurdum" (Journal of Financial Economics, 2009), David Yermack found that chief executives' gifts of stock to their own family foundations tended to come just before share prices fell, more than chance would suggest. Later work by Avci, Schipani and Seyhun reached similar conclusions about insider gifts more broadly. Almost nobody tracks these filings in public. We do.

What happened after the gifts

Three months after the gift, the typical stock finished −1.6% against the S&P 500 (median, across 106 gifts with prices on both ends), and 58% of them trailed the index. For gifts worth $1 million or more, the median was −0.8%. That fits the research: on average, the gift date has been close to a high point.

Largest gifts

Best-timed gifts

The gifts followed by the biggest falls against the index: Bryan Ganz (BYRN, Jan 15, 2026, −64.4%); John J. Gebbia (SIEB, Jan 20, 2026, −45.5%); Gloria E. Gebbia (SIEB, Jan 20, 2026, −45.5%); Evan Spiegel (SNAP, Jan 5, 2026, −39.1%); Scott D. Cook (INTU, Jan 8, 2026, −38.9%); Carl M. Eschenbach (WDAY, Jan 8, 2026, −33.0%); Richard B. Handler (JEF, Jan 7, 2026, −31.6%); Kevin M. Sheehan (PLAY, Jan 20, 2026, −30.1%).

How to read it

Value is the number of shares given times the weekly closing price nearest the gift date; the Form 4 itself usually shows no price for a gift. A falling stock after one gift proves nothing: people give to charity for real reasons, often at the end of the year, and many gifts go to family trusts for estate planning. The pattern only means something across many gifts, which is why the headline number is a median. We show gifts of $100,000 or more.

Examples

How a gift deduction works: an executive holds 10,000 shares bought years ago for $5. The stock is at $100. Selling would trigger capital-gains tax on $950,000. Giving the shares to a charity instead avoids that tax and, within IRS limits, gives a deduction for the full $1 million market value. If the stock then falls to $80, the deduction stays at $1 million. That is why the timing of gifts gets studied.

Explain it like I'm 13

Imagine you get a gold star from your teacher for donating a toy, and the bigger the toy's price on the day you donate, the bigger the star. If you knew the toy's price was about to drop, you would donate it today. Researchers noticed some insiders seem to donate shares right before the price falls. This page checks whether that still happens.

Built from SEC Form 4 and 13F filings and STOCK Act reports as read by WallStPal, rebuilt every day. Prices are weekly closing prices derived from SEC data and can lag by a few weeks. Results describe what stocks did, not anyone's profit, and are not investment advice. See our method.