“Are insiders buying?” gets asked at every high and every low. For September so far, measured in dollars, corporate insiders sold about five times what they bought.

The month to date carries $328.7 million of open-market purchases against $1.72 billion of sales — a buy-to-sell ratio of 0.16, across 373 purchase filings and 2,023 sale filings.

That imbalance is the resting state, not a warning, and the reason is structural. Executives are paid in stock, so selling is largely mechanical: scheduled 10b5-1 plans, shares withheld for tax at vesting, option exercises with a same-day sale. Buying is the discretionary act. One insider choosing to put cash into their own shares carries information that a hundred routine disposals do not.

The buy side over the three weeks to 10 September ran to 973 open-market purchases worth $1.33 billion. One name is 47% of that: Republic Services, at $625 million across 32 filings. Strip that single situation out and the other 972 purchases come to roughly $704 million — which is the first lesson in reading any aggregate insider figure.

Size tells the rest of the story. Only 115 of those 973 purchases were $1 million or larger; the median filing is far smaller than the totals suggest. By role, directors filed 401 of the purchases, chief executives 191 and finance chiefs 51.

What survives all this noise is shape rather than level. A cluster — several officers of the same company buying inside the same window — is harder to explain away than one director topping up. A chief executive or finance chief buying carries more information than a board member, because they see the numbers first. And a repeat buyer who adds after a decline is saying something a single purchase cannot.

Every figure above comes from SEC Form 4 filings via EDGAR, reviewed by InsiderBuying.com, for the windows stated. None of it is a recommendation, and a purchase is not a forecast — insiders are early, wrong, and right in roughly the proportions everyone else is.

See this week's graded open-market purchases → insiderbuying.com/insiders/top-buys