Insider buying and selling
Insider trading data is the record of shares bought and sold by a company's promoters, directors and key managerial personnel, which SEBI's insider trading regulations require them to disclose to the exchange within days of the trade.
Under SEBI's Prohibition of Insider Trading regulations, a promoter, director or KMP who trades more than ₹10 lakh of the company's shares in a quarter files a disclosure, and NSE broadcasts it. `insider_net_buy_value_90d` adds up what those people bought in the open market over disclosures broadcast in the last 90 days and subtracts what they sold. `promoter_net_buy_value_90d` is the same for the promoter group alone, and `insider_buyers_90d` counts how many different insiders bought. A stock nobody traded reads 0, which makes `insider_net_buy_value_90d > 0` a real condition.
Most of what gets disclosed is noise for a screen, and the fields leave it out. ESOP allotments, gifts to family, transfers between promoter-group entities, preferential allotments and pledges all move shares without anyone choosing to pay the market price, so only market purchases and sales count. Employees are left out too, because their sales are mostly vested stock being sold on schedule. Debentures and warrants filed on the same forms are dropped, since a single NCD subscription can read as hundreds of crores of "shares".
The date that matters is the broadcast, not the trade. A disclosure routinely arrives weeks after the shares changed hands, and a scan replayed on a past date sees a trade only from the day the market could have read about it, the next session if NSE published it after the 15:30 close. That makes the hit-rate replays honest and the signal slower than the trade itself. A corrected filing replaces the original and counts from its own date.
Promoter buying is the stronger read. A promoter adding to an already large stake with their own money is a statement no outside analyst can make. Selling says less: promoters sell to pay taxes, fund other businesses or meet the minimum public float rule. Several insiders buying together carries more weight than one large purchase, which is what `insider_buyers_90d >= 2` asks. The record begins in November 2015.
In Sift
Written as insider_net_buy_value_90d — rupees bought less sold, 1cr and 50L are valid values; insider_buyers_90d — a count of people; days_since_promoter_buy — calendar days. A working scan — Promoters bought over ₹1 crore net in the open market in the last 90 days, in an uptrend:
where promoter_net_buy_value_90d > 1cr and close > sma(200)1
of the 500 most-traded NSE stocks match today, as of 30 Oct 2026
Scans that use it
Prebuilt scans in the library whose query reads this value — each with a hit-rate replay over the last 250 sessions.
Promoters buying in the open market
The promoter group bought more than ₹1 crore net on the exchange in the last 90 days, in a stock above its 200-day average.
Several insiders buying
Two or more promoters, directors or KMPs bought in the open market in the last 90 days, and insiders as a whole bought more than they sold.
Common questions
Is insider buying a buy signal?
It is evidence and not a signal. Promoters know their business better than anyone outside it, and buying with their own money at the market price is hard to fake. They can still be early, wrong, or supporting a falling price. The scans on this site pair it with a trend or valuation condition rather than using it alone.
Why does a promoter's stake change not show up as insider buying?
Because most stake changes are not market purchases. A preferential allotment, a warrant conversion, a merger or a transfer between promoter-group companies changes the holding without a trade on the exchange. `promoter_change_qoq` from the quarterly shareholding pattern sees all of them; the insider fields see only open-market buying and selling.
How current is the insider data?
Disclosures are synced from NSE every night. A trade is counted from the day NSE broadcast its disclosure, which is usually two to five days after the trade and sometimes weeks.