Iggy’s Journal: Directors Bought Shares and Companies Bought Back Their Own. What Each Tells You and What It Cannot

Iggy’s Journal: Directors Bought Shares and Companies Bought Back Their Own. What Each Tells You and What It Cannot

Mon 19 Oct 2026 | Midday

The Numbers

One chairman spent S$1.64 million on shares, and his deemed interest rose from 71.87% to 71.94%, a change of 0.07 percentage points. An independent director made a first purchase of S$109,000. The chairman’s purchase was about 15 times larger in dollars, and the two filings are still not the same kind of event. The dollar amount alone does not show which one carries more information.

Buybacks show the same gap between a total and what is inside it. Companies spent S$40.9 million across 29 companies, and most of it came from two of them. Similar spending can represent 0.79% of a company’s issued shares or 3.15%, about four times as much.

My Personal Take

I read the percentage before the dollar figure. S$1.64 million looks like a strong signal, but 0.07 points is what actually changed in the chairman’s position, and the filing already told you he owned almost three-quarters of the company before he bought. It is the same habit as Sunday’s weekly list: the size of a move means little until you know what it is measured against. When I open a director’s filing, my first question is how much that person already owned. The episode sets the two directors side by side and then applies the same test to the buybacks, where a total across 29 companies hides how concentrated the spending was. I leave the conclusion for the episode.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/7xBk-MRDvzg

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/directors-bought-shares-and-companies

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Not financial advice. Iggy’s Forensic Compliance Standards apply.