Flying below the radar: Insider trading by executives below the top

Hans K. Hvide; Kasper Meisner Nielsen

doi:10.1016/j.jfineco.2026.104282

Flying below the radar: Insider trading by executives below the top

Hans K. Hvide^1,2,3,4; Kasper Meisner Nielsen⁵

¹ University of Aberdeen · ² IZA - Institute of Labor Economics · ³ Centre for Economic Policy Research · ⁴ University of Bergen · ⁵ Copenhagen Business School

Journal of Financial Economics 2026 open access

To enforce insider trading laws, financial regulators require top executives to make their own-company trades public. One implication of this regulatory focus is that executives below the top fly under the radar. We use administrative register data from Norway to examine whether executives below the top in listed companies earn abnormal returns on purchases in own-company stock. We find evidence of abnormal returns on such trades, about 50 to 100 basis points at the 1-month horizon. The abnormal returns on purchases in other stocks are negative, making high investor ability an unlikely explanation.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2026.104282
Volume: 181
Pages: 104282
Language: en
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