Insider Selling Just Hit a Record — Tickeron AI Reveals Who's Cashing Out

Key Takeaways

The Data Retail Traders Need to Watch

Indicator

Latest Reading

Why It Matters for Traders

Source

Share of US companies with net insider buying

14.8% (July 2026)

Lowest monthly reading in at least 21 years of tracked data

Seeking Alpha

Change since February 2026

-12.0 points

Rapid deterioration in insider sentiment over just five months

Kobeissi Letter

10-year average net-buying rate

~25%

Current reading sits ~7 points below the historical norm

Kobeissi Letter

Net-buying rate, January 2022 (for comparison)

~44%

Shows how far sentiment has swung over the cycle

Kobeissi Letter

Large-cap companies with net insider buying

3.2%

Bearishness is most extreme among the largest, most-followed names

Morningstar/MarketWatch

Sectors with net insider buying

Only 3: consumer staples, materials, utilities

Narrows the defensive playbook to a handful of sectors

Morningstar/MarketWatch

H1 2026 total insider stock sales

$77.6 billion, +20% YoY

A record pace, with an 11:1 sell-to-buy ratio

Bloomberg

AI-linked share of top-10 individual sellers

8 of 10

Confirms the selling is concentrated in the sector that has led the 2026 rally

Bloomberg

Tech/Media & Telecom (TMT) share of S&P 500 market cap

49%, a record (9 pts above dot-com peak)

The sector most exposed to a sentiment reversal now dominates index weight

DailyHodl

Stock price, year-to-date performance, and analyst price-target data throughout this report reflect Tickeron's real-time market data and analyst-consensus feeds as of the July 31, 2026 market close.

Inside the Selling: Seven Concrete Examples

Recent Form 4 filings compiled by Tickeron show the scale of individual insider selling across some of the market's most-watched names:

Company

Insiders Selling

Shares Sold

Dollar Value

Week/Period

Source

NVDA — NVIDIA ($172.70 at filing)

3

67,046

$11.8M

Week of 3/23/2026

Tickeron

AVGO — Broadcom ($310.51 at filing)

4

164,737

$53.0M

Week of 3/23/2026

Tickeron

AMAT — Applied Materials ($617.11)

3

105,240

$62.5M

Week noted 7/2026

User-reported

TXN — Texas Instruments ($226.16 at filing)

3

101,297

$22.6M

Week of 2/16/2026

Tickeron

NFLX — Netflix ($1,103.66 at filing)

4

35,754

$39.3M

Week of 11/10/2025

Tickeron

WBD — Warner Bros. Discovery ($27.95 at filing)

7

7,491,270

$211.1M

Week of 3/9/2026

Tickeron

MAR — Marriott International ($347.93 at filing)

6

93,028

$33.4M

Week of 2/23/2026

Tickeron

A few details stand out for retail traders. At WBD, CEO David Zaslav alone accounted for $113.2 million of the $211.1 million sold, alongside the Chief Revenue & Strategy Officer ($44.2M) and CFO ($27.9M) — a broad, senior-level exit rather than a single executive's routine diversification (Tickeron). At MAR, President and CEO Anthony Capuano sold $22.6 million of the $33.4 million total, with the sale landing as the stock traded within striking distance of its 52-week high (Tickeron). At AVGO, the selling arrived even as the stock's own momentum and MACD indicators turned positive on July 30, 2026 — insiders taking profits directly into a bullish technical breakout (Tickeron).

Other Sectors Showing Elevated Insider Selling

Beyond the seven names above, Tickeron's models flag insider-selling concentration spreading across adjacent corners of the market:

The counterpoint is just as instructive. In the three sectors where insiders are still net buyers, real purchases are visible: Conagra Brands CEO John Brase bought $510,632 of stock (35,000 shares) on July 17, 2026, and Albertsons CEO Susan Morris bought $449,937 (39,409 shares) on July 28, 2026 — both companies feature in the defensive basket below (Investing.com).

10 Stocks Tickeron's AI Flags as Vulnerable to Insider-Driven Downside

These names combine heavy, senior-level insider selling with — in most cases — sharp 2026 rallies that Tickeron's pattern-recognition models read as technically overextended, even where Wall Street's own consensus stays bullish.

Ticker

Price

YTD 2026

Wall St. Avg Target

Tickeron AI 30-Day Outlook

AI Watch Level

NVDA

$200.75

+7.64%

$331.25 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — profit-taking risk after insider clusters near highs

Support near $185–190

AVGO

$389.28

+12.48%

$520.00 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — selling into a fresh bullish MACD cross

Support near $360–365

AMAT

$507.67

+97.54%

$689.00 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — parabolic move stretches valuation

Support near $440–450

TXN

$275.74

+58.94%

$315.00 (Buy)

Bearish — overbought after a 59% rally

Support near $255–260

NFLX

$71.71

-23.52%

$87.40 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — downtrend continuation risk

Support near $65.08 (52-wk low)

WBD

$26.30

-8.74%

$31.00 (Hold)

Bearish — CEO-led exit signals limited turnaround confidence

Support near $24–25

MAR

$372.83

+20.17%

$388.80 (Buy)

Bearish — CEO selling into 52-week-high territory

Support near $345–350

ANET

$180.35

+37.64%

$200.00 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — crowded AI-networking trade, overbought

Support near $160–165

AMD

$476.15

+122.33%

$619.00 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — parabolic exhaustion after a 122% YTD run

Support near $420–430

CRWD

$190.86

+62.86%

$234.25 (Strong Buy)

Bearish — founder-CEO selling into a 63% rally

Support near $170–175

Why these were flagged:

10 Defensive Stocks Tickeron's AI Favors in the Net-Buying Sectors

These names sit in the three sectors — consumer staples, materials, and utilities — where insiders remain net buyers, and several show direct executive purchases rather than just an absence of selling.

Ticker

Price

YTD 2026

Wall St. Avg Target

Tickeron AI 30-Day Outlook

AI Watch Level

PG

$144.49

+0.82%

$159.80 (Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $167.25 (52-wk high)

KO

$87.59

+25.29%

$96.20 (Strong Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $90.92 (52-wk high)

CAG

$14.51

-16.18%

$15.00 (Buy)

Bullish — contrarian value after CEO insider buying

Resistance near $17–18

ACI

$11.58

-32.56%

$13.20 (Buy)

Bullish — contrarian value after CEO insider buying

Resistance near $14–15

LIN

$478.38

+12.19%

$564.80 (Strong Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $548.20 (52-wk high)

NEM

$93.71

-6.15%

$133.25 (Strong Buy)

Bullish — pullback offers entry in a net-buying sector

Resistance near $110–115

APD

$294.89

+19.38%

$343.20 (Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $314.87 (52-wk high)

NEE

$86.92

+8.27%

$93.33 (Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $98.75 (52-wk high)

DUK

$125.43

+7.01%

$136.75 (Strong Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $134.49 (52-wk high)

SO

$94.54

+8.42%

$102.00 (Buy)

Bullish

Resistance near $100.84 (52-wk high)

Why these were picked:

Year-to-Date Performance: A Tale of Two Baskets

The gap between the two baskets is wide enough to be the story on its own. Among the flagged decline candidates, AMD leads with a +122.33% year-to-date gain, followed by AMAT at +97.54%, CRWD at +62.86%, and TXN at +58.94% — four names that have already delivered outsized 2026 returns before insiders started cashing out in size. NFLX is the exception, already down -23.52% for the year even before its most recent Chief Legal Officer-led sale, and WBD is down -8.74%.

The defensive basket tells a more mixed but instructive story. KO is up +25.29% year-to-date, one of the strongest performers in either list, while utilities NEE, DUK, and SO post steadier, single-digit gains of +8.27%, +7.01%, and +8.42% respectively — consistent with their role as low-volatility ballast rather than momentum plays. CAG and ACI are down -16.18% and -32.56% for the year, which is exactly why their CEOs' insider purchases stand out — buying is far more informative when it happens after a stock has already fallen than when it happens near a high.

Why Tickeron's AI Picked These Stocks

Tickeron's AI models layer four types of signal before flagging a name for either basket:

  1. Insider transaction data — Form 4 filings are screened for cluster selling (multiple executives selling in the same week), CEO/CFO-level participation, and dollar size relative to the executive's typical trading pattern. Broad, senior-level exits like Warner Bros. Discovery's $211.1 million week (Tickeron) score materially higher risk than a single director's routine diversification.
  2. Technical and pattern signals — Tickeron's AI Pattern Trading Bots scan price action for overbought extremes and trend exhaustion, which is why names that have already rallied 60%–120%+ in 2026, like AMAT, AMD, and CRWD, can be flagged bearish even with bullish Wall Street price targets — the models weight near-term technical extension more heavily than a 12-month analyst view.
  3. Sector rotation via FLMs — the Financial Learning Models track where sector-level insider sentiment is deteriorating versus improving, which is what surfaces semiconductors, media, and hospitality as high-risk pockets and staples, materials, and utilities as the safer destinations.
  4. Divergence between insider behavior and sell-side consensus — when Wall Street analysts stay broadly bullish (as they do across nearly every name in this report) while insiders sell in size, Tickeron's models treat that gap as a contrarian signal worth flagging rather than a contradiction to ignore, since insiders typically have earlier visibility into demand and margin trends than the sell side.

The combination of insider-transaction screening, pattern-based technical signals, and sector-rotation tracking is designed to separate names where a bullish analyst target still leaves room for a near-term pullback from names in genuinely under-owned, insider-favored sectors.

Next-Month Directional Calls

Tickeron's AI models expect the ten insider-selling names to face downward pressure over the next 30 days, with AMD, AMAT, CRWD, and ANET carrying the highest reversal risk given how far each has already run in 2026, and NFLX and WBD at risk of extending their existing downtrends. On the defensive side, the models expect KO, NEE, DUK, and SO to grind modestly higher toward their 52-week highs, while CAG and ACI are flagged as the highest-conviction contrarian bounce candidates given fresh CEO buying at multi-year lows.

Tickeron's AI Trading Bots and Financial Learning Models

Tickeron's AI Trading Bots are built around dynamic sector rotation: rather than holding a static basket, the bots continuously reallocate between sectors as momentum and macro conditions shift. Recent live examples include a multi-sector strategy spanning oil, aerospace, and semiconductors that delivered a 135.46% return, an oil-and-semiconductor agent up 94%, and a semiconductors/oil/energy multi-agent strategy up 66.69%, all built on short-interval (15-minute) signal timeframes (Tickeron).

Layered on top of sector rotation are Tickeron's AI Pattern Trading Bots, powered by a proprietary AI Pattern Recognition Engine that has analyzed more than 300 million historical price patterns — breakouts, double bottoms, wedges, channels, and volatility expansions — combined with volatility modeling and sentiment-adjusted pattern confirmation. In backtesting, this engine has delivered up to 123% annualized performance (Tickeron).

At the core of the trend-following layer sit Tickeron's Financial Learning Models (FLMs), which are designed to detect and trade fast-moving sector rotations — including the kind of rotation between insider-favored defensive sectors and insider-abandoned growth sectors described throughout this report. FLMs have generated up to 102.27% annualized returns during recent S&P 500 sector-rotation windows, with individual agents such as a semiconductor-focused strategy tracking MPWR posting an 87.08% gain, alongside new 5-minute and 15-minute AI Trading Agents built for aerospace & defense, semiconductors, and leveraged-ETF rotations (Tickeron).

Together, the AI Trading Bots handle sector-level allocation, the AI Pattern Trading Bots handle technical entry/exit timing, and the FLMs handle trend detection and rotation speed — the same three-layer framework used to build the stock calls in this report. Traders can track live bot performance on Tickeron's Trending Robots page.

This report is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Price targets and directional forecasts reflect a combination of Wall Street consensus data and Tickeron's AI model outputs as of July 31, 2026, and are subject to change as market conditions evolve.

Tickeron AI Perspective

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