What Is an Insider Trading Disclosure? (2026)

An insider trading disclosure is a public filing that a company's insiders, its promoters, directors, and key employees, must make when they buy or sell the company's shares above a set threshold. It is not a sign of wrongdoing. It is the opposite: a legally required record that keeps permitted insider trades in the open. In India these disclosures are governed by the SEBI (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations, 2015, and they reach the stock exchanges where anyone can read them.

What triggers an insider trading disclosure?

The main trigger is a value threshold. Under Regulation 7(2) of the SEBI PIT Regulations, 2015, promoters, members of the promoter group, designated persons, and directors must disclose to the company any trades where the traded value exceeds ₹10 lakh, taken as a single transaction or a series of transactions in any calendar quarter. The company then passes the disclosure to the stock exchanges.

Disclosure versus illegal insider trading

These two ideas get confused, so it helps to separate them.

• Insider trading disclosure is a permitted trade that is reported as the law requires. A director buying shares and filing the disclosure is acting within the rules.
• Illegal insider trading is trading on unpublished price-sensitive information, or passing that information to someone who trades. That is prohibited and penalised.

The disclosure regime is the transparency layer. It does not make a trade suspicious. It makes it visible.

How fast does the disclosure reach the market?

The timeline is short. The insider must inform the company within two trading days of the transaction. The company then reports it to the exchanges within two trading days of receiving that intimation. In practice, an insider trade of size shows up on the exchange within a few days, which is far quicker than the quarterly shareholding pattern.

How to read an insider trading disclosure

Treat it as one dated data point, not a signal on its own.

• Note who traded. A promoter or a whole-time director carries different weight from a designated employee.
• Note direction and size. An acquisition and a disposal read differently, and the ₹10 lakh floor means small trades may not appear.
• Check the date. The disclosure is timely but still historical by the time you read it.
• Read it alongside other filings, such as bulk and block deals or a manager's US 13F holdings, rather than in isolation.

Flock reports insider disclosures straight from the exchange filings, dated and linked back to the source. What any single trade means for you is your call to make.