Understand Form 4 filings

THE DISCLOSURE

What Form 4 tells you

Form 4 reports changes in beneficial ownership for people who generally include company directors, officers, and owners of more than 10% of a registered class of the company's equity securities.

Who reports

Directors, officers, and certain beneficial owners subject to Section 16 reporting.

What appears

Reportable purchases, sales, awards, option activity, and other changes in ownership.

Two clocks

The transaction date records when the activity occurred. Filing and SEC acceptance timing show when the disclosure became public.

How to use it

A filing is a public disclosure, not a recommendation, explanation of intent, or forecast.

Most reportable Form 4 transactions are due within two business days, so the transaction date and public filing date may differ.

THE ROWS

Read the transaction

Each reported row uses a transaction code. The code identifies the type of transaction; it does not rank the filing or tell you why it happened.

P Open-market purchase

A purchase of securities on an exchange or from another person.

S Open-market sale

A sale of securities on an exchange or to another person.

M Option exercise

An exercise or conversion of a derivative security, such as an option.

A Grant or award

A grant, award, or other acquisition of securities from the company.

Read the code together with the footnotes, ownership form, price, shares, and holdings after the transaction. A filing can contain multiple rows.

THE AVANT PATTERN

Why Avant watches cluster buying

A single filing is one data point. Avant's canonical cluster-buy signal looks for a precisely defined pattern across qualifying filings.

1. 01

   Qualifying transaction — an open-market purchase coded P, with at least $100,000 in that qualifying transaction row.

2. 02

   Same company — qualifying rows must report the same ticker.

3. 03

   Multiple reported insiders — the pattern requires at least two distinct reported insider names.

4. 04

   Inclusive filing window — qualifying filing dates must fall within an inclusive 11-calendar-day window.

5. 05

   Observable formation — the event forms when the SEC accepts the later qualifying filing that brings the pattern to two distinct reported insider names.

THE RECORD

Use real data