Open market purchase
An insider buying shares on the market with their own money, reported under transaction code P.
Updated 2026-07-26
An open market purchase is the case where an insider pays cash at a market price for shares nobody gave them. It is reported separately from grants precisely because the two are not comparable events.
We label it and count it separately for the same reason. What that behaviour means is a question this site does not answer: the record shows that a person bought a stated number of shares at a stated price on a stated date, and that is the whole of the claim.
Purchases are frequently made under a plan adopted months earlier, so the date of the trade is not necessarily the date of the decision.
Related terms
4 entries- Equity grant
- Shares or units an insider receives as compensation, reported under transaction code A rather than as a purchase.
- Form 4
- The filing in which a company insider reports a change in their holdings, normally within two business days.
- Rule 10b5-1 plan
- A pre-arranged trading plan that lets an insider buy or sell on a fixed schedule set in advance.
- Transaction code
- The one or two letter code on each row of a Form 4 that says what kind of change occurred.
Where this appears in the data
Written for reading the records published here. This is not a legal, tax or accounting definition, and where a jurisdiction defines the term precisely, that definition governs.