Sean Williams Uncovers a $12.8 Billion Insider Trading Alert That Few Investors Are Heeding

The investment world has been captivated by artificial intelligence for the better part of three years, with two companies in particular—Nvidia and Palantir Technologies—becoming the poster children for AI-driven growth. Their stock price trajectories have been nothing short of spectacular. Yet according to recent analysis, the people running these companies are telling a starkly different story through their actions than what their financial results suggest.

When Form 4 filings are examined—the mandatory SEC disclosures that track when company insiders buy and sell shares—a troubling pattern emerges. The cumulative picture painted by these regulatory documents reveals something that deserves far more attention from the investment community than it’s currently receiving.

The Competitive Advantages Propelling Two AI Powerhouses

To understand why this insider activity matters, it’s worth first examining what has driven these companies to such prominence in the AI era.

Nvidia’s dominance in the artificial intelligence infrastructure space rests on a formidable competitive advantage: its graphics processing units power the vast majority of AI-accelerated data centers globally. These chips are essentially the computational engines that enable machine learning models to process information and make autonomous decisions at scale. The company’s lead isn’t merely a first-mover advantage—it’s rooted in hardware capabilities that competitors have struggled to match. CEO Jensen Huang has set an aggressive product roadmap, with new GPU generations scheduled to launch annually. Hopper, Blackwell, and Blackwell Ultra represent the current generation of computing power, while the forthcoming Vera Rubin GPU promises another leap forward.

Palantir’s structural advantage takes a different form. Rather than hardware, the company’s strength lies in specialized software platforms built on machine learning capabilities. Gotham, its flagship product, serves U.S. federal government agencies and allied nations for military planning and threat analysis. These contracts typically span multiple years, creating predictable revenue streams. Foundry, the company’s commercial-focused platform, helps enterprises extract value from their data—a market opportunity with significant runway.

Both companies have built what might be called defensive moats: structural advantages that insulate them from immediate competitive threats. By this measure alone, investors have had good reason to accumulate shares.

The $12.8 Billion Warning Hidden in SEC Filings

Yet here’s where the narrative shifts dramatically. When examining insider trading activity over the five-year period from late January 2021 to the present, a very different picture materializes.

Company insiders—defined as executives, board members, and shareholders owning more than 10% of outstanding shares—are required to file Form 4 with the SEC whenever they buy or sell company stock. These filings provide a real-time window into how people with the deepest knowledge of a company view its valuation.

The aggregate data is striking:

Nvidia insiders have collectively disposed of approximately $5.66 billion more in stock than they’ve purchased. For Palantir, the figure stands at $7.17 billion. Combined, these two AI-focused companies have seen insiders sell $12.83 billion in net shares over this five-year span.

To be clear, not all insider selling should trigger alarm bells. Many executives and board members receive compensation in stock and options. When faced with tax obligations, they often liquidate portions of these grants to cover federal and state taxes. This type of mechanical selling doesn’t necessarily reflect skepticism about long-term value.

However, the pattern at these two companies extends beyond typical tax-driven transactions.

The Absence of Insider Conviction

Here lies the crux of the matter: insider buying activity at both companies has been virtually nonexistent.

At Nvidia, the last executive or board member to purchase shares on the open market did so in early December 2020. That’s over five years ago. Meanwhile, Palantir has recorded only scattered purchases by a beneficial owner, totaling just $7.8 million in insider acquisitions over the same five-year window.

This asymmetry matters. Insiders typically purchase shares for one reason alone: they believe the stock price will rise. When insiders are willing to put their own capital at risk, it signals conviction in future performance. Conversely, when selling vastly outpaces buying—as is dramatically the case here—it sends an unmistakable message that shares aren’t attractively priced at current levels.

The contrast is particularly stark given the bullish narrative surrounding these companies. If insiders truly believed in the durability of the AI revolution and these companies’ ability to capture its benefits, wouldn’t we expect at least occasional share purchases as prices reached all-time highs?

The silence is deafening.

What Valuation Metrics Reveal

The insider trading pattern aligns troublingly well with another warning signal: valuation metrics that have drifted into territory historically associated with market excess.

The price-to-sales (P/S) ratio—which divides a company’s market capitalization by its annual revenue—offers a useful sanity check on valuations. Historically, when market-leading companies at the forefront of transformative technological trends trade at P/S ratios above 30x, it has frequently signaled the presence of speculative excess, or what investors commonly call a bubble.

Nvidia’s P/S ratio surpassed 30x in early November. Palantir’s ratio has stretched even further, approaching 100x as of the week prior to the most recent analysis. These aren’t modest premium valuations—they represent price levels where future expectations become extraordinarily difficult to justify through realistic revenue growth scenarios.

The writing appears to be on the wall. Insiders at these two companies, combined with these elevated valuation metrics, are collectively broadcasting a warning that the steep climb these stocks have experienced may not be sustainable indefinitely.

The Investment Implications

For investors wrestling with whether to add to Nvidia or Palantir positions—or whether to initiate positions entirely—this analysis suggests caution is warranted. The companies’ competitive advantages remain intact. Their revenue growth remains impressive by most standards. The AI tailwind is real.

Yet the combination of historically-high insider selling, near-total absence of insider buying, and P/S ratios that have stretched beyond historical precedent paints a picture worth taking seriously. The people closest to these businesses—those with the best information about competitive positioning, revenue visibility, and profitability prospects—are net sellers.

That dissonance between fundamental strength and insider skepticism is precisely the sort of contradiction that warrants investor attention. Whether this represents a short-term pause before another leg higher or a more meaningful warning about valuations remains to be seen. What’s clear is that the signal from insiders shouldn’t be ignored.