Insider Trading Signals Across Industries: Evidence from Technology, Utilities, and Banking

This paper examines how the predictive content of insider trading varies across industries. Using U.S. insider transaction data from 2005 to 2025 and firm-month level measures of insider trading and forward returns, we compare technology, banking, and utility firms within a unified framework. The results show that insider purchases in banking firms contain the strongest information about future returns, while the signal is substantially weaker in technology firms and moderate in utilities. We al