An insider filing rarely describes a single action.
A Form 4 may report a purchase, a sale, an option exercise, a tax withholding, and a transfer — sometimes all in the same document. On the surface, these appear as a sequence of transactions. Underneath, they represent different ways an insider’s economic exposure changed, for different reasons, at different moments.
This page describes how AugurSignals treats those disclosures — not as signals or conclusions, but as a layered record that can be examined at increasing levels of resolution. For the calculation methodology applied to individual transactions, see Our Methodology.
What a Filing Reveals — and What It Obscures
A single SEC filing can bundle actions that look similar on paper but arise from different mechanisms.
An acquisition code may reflect cash paid in the market, shares delivered through a vesting schedule, or a derivative conversion. A disposition may reflect a voluntary sale, a mandatory tax withholding, or an administrative transfer. These actions are reported together, using the same disclosure format, even though their economic structure differs.
The filing establishes that something happened and how it was reported. It does not resolve how discretionary the action was, how exposure changed, or how it relates to the insider’s broader activity. Those distinctions exist in the record, but they are not visible at first glance.
Separating Actions That Were Reported Together
AugurSignals does not treat the filing itself as the unit of analysis.
Each reported action is examined on its own terms — instrument type, transaction code, price data, ownership change. Some actions can be characterized economically with sufficient clarity. Others cannot. That determination happens before any aggregation.
Actions that meet the platform’s criteria are retained as distinct records. Each corresponds to one insider, one issuer, one date, and one instrument type. A single filing may therefore yield several records, or none at all.
What remains is no longer a stream of mixed events, but a set of comparable records that can be inspected individually.
Internally, these records are referred to as alerts. The term marks their appearance in the system, not their meaning.
What an Alert Preserves
An alert is a snapshot.
It captures what was observable at the moment the transaction became public: the insider’s historical profile as of that date, their role at the issuer, the delay between transaction and disclosure, and the issuer’s size category at the time. Price movement after disclosure is recorded at defined intervals, attached as observations rather than summaries.
These attributes do not update retroactively. When an alert is viewed later, it reflects the context that existed then — not what became apparent afterward.
Across some alerts, patterns emerge. In other cases, they do not. The system preserves both outcomes.
Where Structure Ends
Decomposition clarifies some distinctions, but not all of them.
Disclosure data is shaped by reporting rules, filing accuracy, and market availability. Some actions lack sufficient price information. Some instruments are reported in ways that limit economic characterization. Some insiders have long records; others have only a few entries.
Where the data cannot support a structured record, nothing is inferred. The absence of an alert reflects the limits of the record, not an omitted judgment.
What Remains Visible
After decomposition, what remains is not a conclusion.
It is a set of records, each with its own context, timing, and constraints. Some invite closer examination. Others sit unresolved. Different users may attend to different aspects of the same record, or choose not to treat it as relevant at all.
AugurSignals does not decide which reading applies. It makes the structure of the record and the underlying patterns visible.