About the Data


For many investors it is intuitive that following the trading patterns of Directors can lead to successful investing. Directors have inside knowledge about their companies and generally know when their companies shares are incorrectly valued. However, with large numbers of trades reported every day around the world, it is difficult to know which to follow.

Although Director trades can be considered to be less significant than more mainstream factors such as, for instance company fundamentals or broker recommendations, Directors Deals analysis can provide valuable insight when used in conjunction with these measures. More importantly it is essential to analyse the transactions to achieve real insight.

Data Availability

We source our data from company announcements made public under disclosure regulations. Although our clients have access to the same sources they save time and resources by using our data rather than mining the raw information themselves.

Also in many cases countries have special depositories for Directors Deaings, often deep within the regulatory bodies website and in native languages, making processing the data themselves unrealistic. Using our bespoke technologies and trained analysts we can do the job for our clients, making sure transactions are correctly identified and reported in a timely manner.

Region Average Daily Trades Median Daily Trades
United Kingdom 64 60
Europe 138 132
North America 669 641
Southeast Asia 81 84
Africa Oceania & Middle East 42 40

As the table above demostrates, the sheer number of trades can make it hard for clients to single out significant transactions.

Transaction Significance


Director transactions occur for a multitude of reasons and only a minority are discretionary trades at the market price. For this reason it is necessary to begin by analysing which are the transactions that matter.

Transaction Significance:

  • The value of the trade.
  • Whether there is any remunerative element to the trade.
  • Whether the trade is at the market price.
  • The change in the Director's holding.

    • Director Performance:

  • Whether a trade is discretionary and at the market price.
  • The movement in share price subsequent to each individual trade measured over different timescales.
  • The performance of the market overall.

    • The graph quite clearly shows that without any analysis, the data becomes meaningless and unmanageable. Our analysts are trained to correctly identify transaction types consistently, quickly stripping away the significant trades from the rest. By only displaying on-market purchases and sales, we can more than halve the number of transactions being sent to our clients and this number decreases further as we apply our significance measures.

    Data Quality

    Our data is not a verbatim account of every trade reported as it is reported. We apply rigorous criteria as to which trades are included as well as how we report them. In addition to checking the accuracy of company announcements we also add data and analysis. This process ensures that we supply only 'investment grade' or 'Premium' data.

    Arrow Consistency - Knowing which transactions to exclude can be as important as correctly stating those that we do report. We have fixed 'Transaction Type' definitions because not every transaction is a simple Buy or a Sell. Company announcements do not adhere to clearly defined terms and at times some data items such as a Director holding may not be reported at all.

    Arrow Accuracy - Data reported by companies is checked against our database to ensure that it is accurate and complete. Where queries arise we check the data with the source itself and include a detailed note field where necessary explaining the nature of each transaction. This work is carried out by skilled analysts rather than data entry staff.

    Arrow Brevity - Of the hundreds of transactions reported each day, many are 'technical' and are therefore not reported by us. Each transaction appears on our reports as a single line which means that our clients can see a whole day or week's worth of transactions on a single page.

    Arrow Context - We supplement reported data to add missing items as well as some additional information about the company and the Director which may have a bearing on the timing of a trade. Some of our derived proprietary data is included in all our reports.

    Database Description #
    Number of Companies 55,187
    Number of Securities 90,006
    Number of People 198,969
    Number of Directors 232,369
    Countries Covered 47
    Countries Soon to be Covered 7

    Directors Deals is a global data provider: this is illustrated by the size of our database, with over 55,000 companies covered in almost every region of the world.