Value Options Letter — Free Tool
The options insiders exercise, receive and trade.
Every option exercise, grant and call or put trade that company officers, directors and large shareholders report to the SEC, with a plain-English note on what each one is and what it usually means.
Value Options Letter is a research publication, not an investment adviser. This page applies the same screens to the same public SEC Form 4 filings for every visitor. A trade listed here is not a recommendation to buy or sell anything, and an insider’s trade says nothing about whether a security suits you. Options involve risk, including the loss of the full amount paid. Figures come from the filings themselves, which must be filed within two business days of the trade, and can contain errors; each row links to its filing.
Free with your email: every trade instead of the first 10, a CSV export, more more screens, and a weekly email on the week’s biggest insider option trades.
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How this works
- Source. Officers, directors and owners of more than 10% of a company must report their trades in its stock and options to the SEC on Form 4 within two business days. Each weekday night we read every Form 4 filed that day on EDGAR and keep the ones involving options. Amended filings are not included.
- What counts. Exercises of stock options and stock appreciation rights, new option grants, and purchases or sales of call and put options. Restricted stock units and other share awards that aren’t options are left out.
- Held or sold. We compare the shares the filing reports selling in the market with the shares left after any the company withheld (withholding usually covers taxes or the exercise price and isn’t a sale). Selling 20% or less counts as exercised and held; more than that counts as exercised and sold, and the card says how many shares were sold.
- Size. The larger of the cash needed to exercise (shares times the exercise price) and the reported sale proceeds. Stock appreciation rights cost nothing to exercise, so for them it is the sale proceeds alone. For calls and puts it is the reported price times the shares covered; for a grant, shares times the exercise price. All prices come from the filings, not from market quotes.
- 10b5-1 plans. When a filing says a trade was made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan, a schedule set up in advance, we say so: the timing of a planned trade usually tells you less.
- An insider’s trade is one data point. Most exercises are routine, driven by pay schedules, taxes or expiring options, and none of this can see what the insider knows or intends.