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10 Stocks You Are Selling and Insiders Are Buying

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A falling share price presents investors with two competing possibilities: the market has become too pessimistic, or the business is worth less than it used to be. Quarterly reports rarely settle that argument immediately. Orders can weaken before management cuts guidance, customers can delay payments without cancelling contracts, and an acquisition can produce revenue growth while reducing what existing shareholders earn. Investors sell because they cannot confidently price those risks, even when the company still looks profitable.

Corporate insiders have a closer view of those businesses. Executives see customer behavior, operating costs and financing requirements between earnings reports; directors scrutinize budgets and strategic decisions. That perspective can make a purchase after a decline worthy of investigation. A director’s modest addition also deserves less weight than several executives committing substantial fresh capital. The purchase must be evaluated alongside the buyer’s existing exposure.

The difference is visible in Ameresco, where insider purchases accompanied a business still requiring cash to execute its projects. The question to ask was whether buying reflected a durable operating recovery, rather than whether it predicted next week’s price. Our analysis, Ameresco Insiders Bought About $1.9 Million After the Stock Fell. Are They Signaling an AI Power Rebound?, examines that tension.

The companies below face different versions of the same uncertainty. Homebuilders must sell houses without surrendering too much margin through incentives. Consumer businesses must protect volumes while recovering higher costs. Infrastructure companies need enough financing to turn customer commitments into operating assets. For an example of why that last step is significant, How Sustainable Is Oracle’s Cash Flow Without Customer Prepayments? separates customer funding from the cash its expansion consumes.

Nor does a large drop from a previous high prove a stock is cheap. That high may have assumed profits the company can no longer deliver. A low earnings multiple can be equally misleading when today’s profits represent an incredibly strong point in a cycle. Micron Looks Cheap on Earnings. How Much Can Profits Fall Before That Changes? shows why the earnings denominator needs as much scrutiny as the share price.

When we first launched Insider Monkey in 2010 we exclusively focused on tracking insider transactions. There reason is pretty straightforward. Investing is a risky business. There is always uncertainty because we, the investors, don’t have perfect information. When the stocks in our portfolio start going down, we sometimes get scared and sell our shares. Insiders have better information than we do. It isn’t perfect but they know the nuances of their business and they know what they can and can’t do to turn things around.  That’s why sometimes they buy after their stocks decline and sometimes they keep selling. In this article we will bring 10 stocks insiders are buying at deeply discounted prices. If the insiders are right, these stocks should perform well over the next 6 to 12 months.

Our Methodology:

We reviewed Insider Monkey’s insider-purchase records and the filings for transactions dated September 26 through October 24, 2026. We shortlisted 10 companies with U.S. exchange-listed shares or ADRs, market caps of at least $5 billion at the October 23 close, and purchases following a meaningful share-price decline. We excluded stock awards and option exercises from the qualifying purchases.

Large shareholders qualify alongside officers and directors; we identify those differences explicitly.

We ranked the 10 companies by the number of hedge funds holding their shares in Insider Monkey’s Q2 2026 database, from lowest to highest. Q1 comparisons provide context, but the tracked fund universe changes and the holdings predate these purchases. Short-interest figures refer to September 30, 2026. Market values and quoted share prices use October 23 unless otherwise stated.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Insider Monkey’s quarterly newsletter strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 599.2% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 372 percentage points (see more details here).

These strategy returns are measured through June 2, 2026.

10. Telecom Argentina S.A. (NYSE:TEO)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 16

Telecom Argentina’s ADR fell 11.5% between September 23 and October 9. Currency exposure and the obligations attached to its Telefónica Argentina acquisition complicate the recovery case. On October 14, the board accepted Metrotel’s $450 million offer, plus applicable taxes, for assets and associated sharing arrangements required by the competition remedy.

On October 9, digital-growth and fintech executive Martín Andrés Heine bought 7,000 Class B ordinary shares for about $18,663. These represented 1,400 ADRs economically. The purchase increased his reported ordinary-share position from 34,500 to 41,500 (see all insider purchases in TEO shares here).

Bulls can point to Q2 adjusted EBITDA margin improving to 36.8% from 27.7%, using inflation-adjusted results. Preserving purchasing power remains essential as management’s earlier explanation of price increases versus customer-retention discounts is in Telecom Argentina’s Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript.

Hedge-fund holders increased from 12 to 16 in Q2. September short interest was 158,350 ADRs, but this U.S. figure alone cannot capture bearish exposure across the company’s share classes and markets.

9. MSC Industrial Direct Co., Inc. (NYSE:MSM)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 34

MSC Industrial fell 15.4% on October 22 after its earnings release, despite fiscal fourth-quarter sales rising 10.3%. The industrial distributor’s next-quarter adjusted operating-margin forecast of 9.5%–10.1% was below the latest quarter’s 10.9%. A $41.8 million impairment tied to abandoning its Digital Core project also highlighted execution costs that adjusted earnings exclude.

Director E. Reuben Slone bought 433 shares the following day for $50,129. The purchase followed the selloff, although a modest dollar commitment cannot establish that the earnings reset is finished (see the history of insider purchases in MSM).

The bull case has operating support as adjusted EPS rose to $1.45 from $1.09. Translating recovering demand into lasting profit depends partly on customer retention — the central argument in the earlier MSC Industrial Direct: A Bull Case Theory.

Hedge-fund participation rose from 32 to 34 in Q2. Quantinno held over 0.6 million shares, while AQR held over 0.45 million. Short interest of 2.45 million shares, or 5.4% of float, shows additional skepticism but doesn’t establish a consensus against recovery.

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