What is insider trading?
Insider trading is when the management or board of a listed company buys or sells shares in their own company. It is fully legal — as long as it happens without the use of secret information, and as long as the trade is made public. When management buys with their own money, it is often read as confidence in the company.
Legal and illegal
Two completely different things are both called insider trading:
- Legal: The CEO buys shares in her own company in a period when no secret news is pending. The trade is reported and published within days. That is what this entry is about.
- Illegal: Someone trades on information the public does not have — say an earnings report not yet published. That is a crime, and it is why management has "closed windows" before earnings in which they may not trade at all.
What you can read from it
Buying says more than selling. When a CEO buys with her own money, there is essentially one reason: she thinks the stock will be worth more. When she sells, there can be a hundred reasons — a house, a divorce, tax, diversifying her own wealth. So: management buying is a signal; management selling is usually noise.
Size matters too. A CEO buying a month's salary worth says little. One buying several years' salary worth says a fair bit.
One signal among many
Management gets it wrong too. There are plenty of examples of CEOs buying big — shortly before it all went wrong. Insider buying is a piece that can confirm a picture you already have from the accounts. It is not a picture in itself.
The typical beginner's mistake
Selling because a CEO sold. Management often gets a large part of their pay in shares and has to sell some to have money to live on. It says nothing about the company.
How you see it in Kiggo
Kiggo shows the latest company announcements on every stock — and reports of management trades are exactly such an announcement ("Managers' transactions"). Kiggo does not judge the trades for you; it is a place to look if you want to see whether management has its own money on the line.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Where can I see insider trades in Nordic companies?
They are published as company announcements under headings like "Managers' transactions" — on the company's own website, at the exchange (e.g. Nasdaq Copenhagen or Stockholm) and in the news feed in Kiggo.
How quickly must an insider trade be published?
In the EU, managers must report within three business days of the trade, and the company must publish it promptly after. So you see the trade a few days after it happened.
Kiggo explains — Kiggo does not advise. We never tell you what to buy or sell, and key figures can only be compared between companies in the same industry. The decision is yours. Last updated 2026-09-07.
Written by Claus Frisch, founder of Kiggo. Not an adviser, not a bank — Kiggo explains, you decide.
