GECKO

Strategies · on Gecko’s tip list

Director BuyingFundamentalSwing

£250k-£5m of their own shares · bought within minutes

refine · drop · retestGeckobornStrategydevelopmentBacktestingForwardtestingTipgenerationwe are herePapertradingLivetrading

Today: Tip generation. Gecko raises tips from this strategy and tests them on a paper (pretend-money) account. Strategies loop back from paper trading to be refined, dropped or replaced - only those that pass every check reach live trading.

Follows company directors when they buy a large amount of their own company’s shares with their own money.

The idea

Directors must announce every dealing in their company’s shares. Most are routine - share awards, monthly plans - but when directors buy a large amount on the open market with their own money, the shares have tended to beat the market over the following month. Two thirds of these announcements come out during the trading day, so Gecko watches the FCA archive every two minutes and buys shortly after.

Which shares

Gecko’s original 115 stocks (being widened to all 248).

When it buys

  1. Directors announce open-market purchases of their own company’s shares totalling £250,000 to £5 million in a day.
  2. Announced during trading hours: buy 15 minutes after the announcement. Otherwise: buy at the next open.

When it sells

  1. Sell at the close 20 trading days later.
  2. Protective stop: 2.5 times the share’s average daily range below the price before the signal.

How often it tips

6%of trading days bring a tip
0.3tips a week on average - at least one in 25% of weeks
1.4tips a month on average
17tips in the backtest’s last 12 months

Counted from the backtest’s trades, 2016-2026, on the shares above. A few more tips arrive than trades: a signal on a share already held is still sent, marked as skipped.

Results so far

£1.86won for every £1 lost
167trades, 2016-2026
53%of trades won
+0.26Raverage per trade, in units of the amount risked

Backtest #415 - CFDs on a £10,000 account risking 2% a trade, with commission and financing, before bid-ask spreads.

Forward testing
Rules frozen 9 October 2026 - forward tracking counts every signal since.
Paper trading
Paper orders are placed automatically during the trading day. No closed paper trades yet.
Live trading
Not live.

Worth knowing

  • The director data is being corrected (some companies’ notices were missed), so these figures will be updated.
  • Developed on all the data; its real test is forward tracking from 9 October 2026.

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