Triple Confirmation: Insiders, Big Funds and Congress Bought the Same Stock

Why combine them

Each group sees a stock from a different place. An insider (officer, director or 10% owner) knows the company from the inside and reports a purchase on Form 4 within two business days. A fund manager such as Berkshire Hathaway or Pershing Square studies it from the outside, with a team of analysts, and reports holdings on Form 13F up to 45 days after each quarter. A member of Congress may know about the rules and contracts that affect a whole industry, and reports trades within 45 days under the STOCK Act. Agreement between people with different information is rarer, and more interesting, than any one of them buying.

To appear here, a stock needs at least two of: an open-market insider purchase of $10,000 or more in the last six months; a tracked fund that opened or added to a position worth at least 0.5% of its portfolio in its latest 13F; a purchase reported by a member of Congress dated in the last six months. Right now 876 stocks have insider buying, 237 were added by a tracked fund, and 261 were bought by a member of Congress.

All three bought

Insiders and Congress

Big funds and Congress

The 31 stocks where insiders and funds agree (without Congress) are on the double signal page.

How to read it

The three reports run on different clocks. A Form 4 is two business days old at most; a 13F can describe holdings from up to four and a half months ago; a Congress report can arrive 45 days after the trade, and later when a member files late. So "agreement" means each group bought at some point in the window, not on the same day. Members' reports give only a dollar range and include trades by a spouse or child, and a fund "adding" can mean a small top-up. Open each stock's page to see the dates and sizes before drawing conclusions.

Examples

In 2022 Berkshire Hathaway built a large stake in Occidental Petroleum. Once Berkshire owned more than 10% of Occidental, it counted as an insider and had to report each further purchase on Form 4 within two business days, and the position also appeared in Berkshire's quarterly 13F. That is two of the three systems reporting the same buyer. This page looks for the rarer case where three different kinds of buyer, with different information, all show up in the same stock.

Explain it like I'm 13

Three people you trust for different reasons all buy the same new game: the person who works at the game studio, a famous reviewer who plays everything, and a friend whose parent makes the rules for game stores. Any one of them could be wrong. When all three choose the same game, it is at least worth looking at why.

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.