Buying the Dip in Their Own Stock: Executive Share Purchases, Q2 2026

Executives sell their own stock for all kinds of reasons — taxes, diversification, a new house. They tend to buy it on the open market for only one. That asymmetry is why a purchase, when it happens in size, is harder to wave away than a sale.

Most quarters bring very little of it. The spring of 2026 brought a handful of real ones, disclosed on SEC Form 4, and one that stood well apart from the rest.

One purchase stood apart

Jeff Green, the founder and chief executive of The Trade Desk (TTD), bought roughly six million shares over three days in early March for about $148 million, at prices between $23.49 and $25.08. The buy came after a brutal stretch — the stock had fallen close to 85% from its December 2024 peak as revenue growth slowed through 2025, advertisers pulled back, and a dispute with agency group Publicis weighed on the pipeline. Shares jumped about 18% the day the purchase was disclosed.

At $148 million from a single person, Green's purchase was an order of magnitude larger than anything else on the tape. The rest of the buying was smaller, but in some ways more interesting — because it came in groups.

When the whole room buys together

At On Holding (ONON), the Swiss running-shoe company, all three co-founders bought on the same day in May — each putting in an identical $2.2 million. At GE HealthCare (GEHC), the buying spanned the C-suite and the board: the chief executive, the chief financial officer, the general counsel and several directors, including GE chief executive Larry Culp and Stryker's Kevin Lobo. Eight insiders in all.

A single insider can be hard to read. A room full of them, acting together, is a different kind of data point.

A few more put cash to work

Beyond the clusters, several chief executives stepped in directly:

• Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) — about $29M across seven insiders, led by director and Bain Capital co-chair Stephen Pagliuca, with chief executive John Chidsey also buying
• Oscar Health (OSCR) — $11.9M, chief executive Mark Bertolini's first open purchase at the insurer
• Fox Corp (FOX) — $10.6M, executive chair and chief executive Lachlan Murdoch
• Palo Alto Networks (PANW) — $10.0M, chief executive Nikesh Arora
• Waste Connections (WCN) — $7.6M, chief executive Ron Mittelstaedt
• Six Flags (FUN) — $6.2M across three insiders

The biggest dollar 'buys' weren't really conviction

A few of the largest dollar purchases came not from management but from outside backers. A $310 million purchase at Jefferies (JEF) was strategic partner Sumitomo Mitsui. General Atlantic put roughly $127 million into Alkami Technology (ALKT) — strategic and financial investors building positions, not executives spending their own money on the company they run.

Set those aside, and the real signal is the quieter list above.

Notes

Figures are drawn from SEC Form 4 open-market purchases over the 120 days ending June 26, 2026, and reflect named officers and directors. Insider activity by company is available in the insiders section.