---
title: "Insider trading plans after the new rules (research idea)"
description: "Insider trading appears on 40 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, and 17 of 45 carry a regulation or enforcement keyword, but \"trading plan\" appears on one. Since 2023, US executives' pre-scheduled trading plans must have cooling-off periods and be disclosed. Did the plans stop being a cover for informed trades?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/insider-trading-plans
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/insider-trading-plans.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
share_text: "Insider trading plans after the new rules (research idea): Insider trading appears on 40 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, and 17 of 45 carry a regulation or enforcement keyword, but \"trading plan\" appears on one."
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["finance", "accounting", "governance"]
keywords: ["insider trading", "insider trading regulation"]
---

# Insider trading plans after the new rules

Insider trading appears on 40 recent papers in the finance and accounting journals, and 17 of 45 carry a regulation or enforcement keyword, but "trading plan" appears on one. Since 2023, US executives' pre-scheduled trading plans must have cooling-off periods and be disclosed. Did the plans stop being a cover for informed trades?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 45 papers carry an insider-trading keyword (32 in finance journals, 7 in accounting); "insider trading" appears on 40 and "insider trading regulation" on 5. Of the 45, 17 carry a plan, enforcement, regulation, detection or machine-learning keyword, but the keyword "trading plan" appears on a single paper.

## Questions

- Before the 2023 rule, did trades under pre-scheduled plans earn abnormal returns, especially plans adopted shortly before trades?
- After the cooling-off period and disclosure requirements, did the returns to plan trades fall, and did executives trade less under plans?
- Did firms with the most profitable plan trades before the rule change their behaviour most?

## Data that could help

Insider trading filings (Form 4) with plan indicators, plan adoption and modification disclosures from 10-Q and 10-K filings, and stock returns.

## Next step

Compare abnormal returns of plan and non-plan insider sales in the two years before and after the 2023 rule.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| insider trading | 2 | #1303 | 0, 2, 2, 0, 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 1, 5, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 5, 4, 2, 4, 1, 6, 3, 5, 1, 5, 3, 2, 5, 3, 0, 2 | 89 |
| insider trading regulation | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0 | 9 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Insider trading plans after the new rules. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/insider-trading-plans

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-insider-trading-plans,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Insider trading plans after the new rules},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/insider-trading-plans}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).