How to track insider trading: three ways, from free to alerts

Here is how to track insider trading in one line: follow the Form 4 reports that a company's officers, directors and 10% owners must file with the SEC by the end of the second business day after they trade its stock. You can read them free on EDGAR, scan them in a screener, or have AyeWatch alert you when one matches what you care about. Here are all three, step by step.

First, which insider trading you can track

The phrase covers two different things. One is legal: insiders buying or selling their own company's shares and reporting it. The other is illegal: trading on material nonpublic information, the subject of SEC Rule 10b5-1. Only the legal kind leaves a public record. Everything below follows those public filings, and nothing here can find the illegal kind.

Way 1: read Form 4s on EDGAR

EDGAR is the SEC's filing system, and it costs nothing.

1. Open EDGAR's search page and look up the company by name or ticker.
2. Filter its filings to form type 4. The form's formal title is "Statement of changes in beneficial ownership", so that is the label to look for.
3. Open a filing. You get a readable version and the raw XML file.
4. To see every company at once, use Latest Filings with form type 4 and Ownership set to "Only". In our test in November 2026, leaving Ownership on "Include" also pulled in 424B prospectuses and fund filings, because the box matches the start of the form name.
5. Copy the RSS link shown above the results into a feed reader.

The SEC does not send email alerts for EDGAR filings, so the feed reader is your notification. For history rather than news, the SEC also publishes quarterly insider transaction data sets, drawn from Forms 3, 4 and 5 and going back to 2006.

Way 2: scan a screener

Screeners put the same filings into sortable tables. OpenInsider lets you filter by insider title, transaction type, trade size and industry, and has preset lists for cluster buys and CEO and CFO purchases. Finviz has a free page of the latest insider trades plus the past week's largest. Both are quick for finding names you did not know about. Both also depend on you remembering to look.

Way 3: get an alert with AyeWatch

If you already know which companies you care about, an alert beats a daily check.

1. Start a free AyeWatch monitor; the free preview needs no card.
2. Describe what you want in a sentence, for example:

Tell me when an officer or director at these companies reports an open-market purchase on Form 4. Ignore grants, option exercises, gifts and trades under a 10b5-1 plan.

3. Optionally paste a company's EDGAR filings page as well, so the page itself is watched and not only the news that repeats it.
4. Choose where alerts go. Push and the in-app feed are on every plan; paid plans, from $9 a month, add email, Slack, Discord and webhooks.

Each alert gives a short summary and links the filing. AyeWatch does not keep its own database of trades and is not a screener, so keep a screener for browsing.

What to check in each filing

• The code. P is an open market or private purchase and S a sale. A is a grant, M an option exercise, F shares withheld for tax, G a gift.
• The role. Box 5 says director, officer (with title) or 10% owner.
• Size. Compare the shares bought with the shares owned after the trade.
• The 10b5-1 box. Since April 2023, a tick there means the trade followed a plan set up in advance.
• Dates. The trade date and the filing date can be two business days apart, sometimes more if the filer is late.

This is a guide to public filings, not investment advice. A Form 4 tells you what an insider did, not what you should do.