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Insiders

Insider activity August 2026

Five stocks in South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia

Michael Fritzell

Michael Fritzell

— 9 min read
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Insider activity August 2026

Hi! Welcome to a subscriber-only edition of Asian Century Stocks – a newsletter about Asian value stocks. For a complete list of all previous posts, check out the Table of Contents.

Disclaimer: I'm Michael Fritzell. This is my own opinion, written for a general readership. It isn't financial advice and isn't tailored to anyone's circumstances, financial position or objectives. I'm not a licensed financial adviser and I don't hold myself out as one. Please do your own research and speak to a qualified adviser before acting on anything here. As of 17 September 2026 I hold no position in any security named in this article, and I will not buy or sell shares in any of them within seven days of publication. I receive no compensation from any company, fund, platform, publication or individual mentioned. Views attributed to other investors are theirs, and I have not verified their positions. Transaction data is sourced from Smart Insider, a paid subscription service with no commercial relationship to this publication; I have not independently verified individual filings. Published by Delante Media Pte Ltd.

August insider transactions

The insider buying in August fell to normal levels in Asia, with an almost equal number of buys vs sells:

By region, South Korea continues to stand out with extremely aggressive insider buying: 263 buys vs only 55 sells:

That sell/buy ratio is almost unheard of in normal environments.

We're back to net selling in China's A-share market and India, with sell/buy ratios much above 1.0x. The same ratios for Hong Kong and Thailand are 0.4x and 0.6x, suggesting optimism among insiders.

There have been industry clusters in Chinese sportswear stocks like Li Ning and Anta Sports. Insider buying has also occurred in two Korean financials: Woori Financial and KB Financial. This follows the insider buying that we saw in Meritz Financial in July.

Five highlighted situations

I'll now go through five of the most significant insider buys in Asia, using data from Smart Insider and ranked from the highest market cap to the lowest:

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