Five Chip Companies Show Concurrent Insider Sell Clusters, Every One Including the CEO or CFO. The Sector Has Not Shown a Single Buy Cluster Since May.

By Kresmion Research, July 6, 2026

Executives at five US-listed chip companies are selling stock in concurrent insider clusters worth 119 million dollars, each including the CEO or the CFO. On the other side of the ledger, insider buy clusters across the entire US market Kresmion tracks add up to 19.6 million dollars, and the semiconductor sector has not produced a single buy cluster since tracking began in late May. The selling wave has been building for three weeks, it kept growing into July, and the price action in the sector has quietly started to agree with it.

Five clusters, one sector, a C-suite name in every one

Kresmion's insider layer groups SEC Form 4 filings into clusters: three or more insiders at the same company trading in the same direction inside a rolling four week window. On the July 6 snapshot, five semiconductor and semiconductor equipment companies show active sell clusters at the same time, and they hold five of the top six slots on the board by dollar value.

Applied Materials leads at $57.9 million across four insiders. Chief executive Gary Dickerson sold $6.7 million on June 15 and another $35.2 million on June 29, the single largest insider sale of the entire wave, which takes his four week total to $41.9 million. The group president of semiconductor products and the chief technology officer sold alongside him. Nvidia follows at $40.3 million: the company's five most senior officers, chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, chief financial officer Colette Kress and three executive vice presidents, all sold on the same day, June 17. Kulicke and Soffa shows $9.2 million across three insiders, $7.3 million of it one June 18 sale by Lester Wong, who serves as both interim chief executive and chief financial officer. Credo Technology shows $6.0 million across five insiders including its CFO, and Marvell Technology $5.7 million from its chief executive, its CFO and its president. Five companies, twenty insiders, and a chief executive or chief financial officer in every cluster.

The selling kept building after Kresmion first flagged it

Kresmion flagged the Nvidia same day sale on June 26, when insider buying across the AI hardware complex had already thinned to almost nothing. The distribution did not stop there. Since that note, Dickerson's $35.2 million June 29 print landed, Marvell president and chief operating officer Chris Koopmans sold $2.8 million on July 1, and a Credo director sold $0.9 million the same day. Those July 1 trades are the freshest prints among these five names. The Credo sale extended a cluster that has been active since mid June, and the Marvell sale put its cluster back on the board after it had briefly aged off.

The concentration numbers tell the same story. On June 23, chip names accounted for 17.8 percent of all active sell-cluster dollars on Kresmion's board. By June 26 the share was 34.4 percent. On the July 6 snapshot it stands at 58.9 percent: nearly six of every ten dollars in insider sell clusters across the whole tracked market now come from this one sector. In the dataset's history only one reading was higher, 59.7 percent on June 5, so the current wave has returned the sector to the top of its observed range rather than to a new extreme, a distinction worth keeping.

The other side of the ledger is empty

Insider selling on its own carries limited information, so the sharper fact is the asymmetry. The 33 insider buy clusters currently active across every sector Kresmion tracks total 19.6 million dollars combined, about a sixth of what the five chip clusters total on their own. The largest single buy cluster anywhere on the board, at a consumer lender, is 7.0 million dollars, smaller than any of the top two chip sell clusters individually. And within semiconductors specifically, the count of buy clusters is zero. Not one has appeared in the entire history of the tracking table, which began on May 23.

The picture widens if adjacent hardware names are included. Dell shows a $21.0 million sell cluster across six insiders, though without a CEO or CFO among them. Ciena shows $2.3 million from seven insiders selling on a single day, June 20, and Flex $2.1 million from six insiders. Add those and the hardware complex holds roughly $144.4 million in active sell clusters, about 71 percent of every sell-cluster dollar in the market.

The tape has started to agree

For most of the wave, the selling ran against a strong market backdrop, which made it easy to dismiss as profit taking. That backdrop has begun to shift. The semiconductor ETF SMH fell 3.2 percent last week, its second losing week in a row, while the money rotated rather than left: financials, health care and industrials closed the week at new highs, the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a record, and the S&P 500 rose 1.8 percent to 7,483.24 (CNBC). That combination is the tension in today's data. The broad tape remains strong, while the sector that led it higher is being sold by the people who run it and has started lagging. The Federal Reserve publishes the minutes of Kevin Warsh's first meeting as chair on Wednesday, the next scheduled event with the reach to move that picture either way.

What this note is not saying

Any individual insider sale is weak evidence. Executives sell stock to diversify, to fund tax bills, and very often on 10b5-1 plans scheduled months in advance, and a Form 4 filing does not say which of those applies. Some of the sales above are almost certainly routine. The reason this data is worth reading anyway is that those explanations are company specific, while the pattern here is sector wide: five C-suites in one industry, in the same month, with zero offsetting buy clusters, at a share of the market's total insider selling that sits near the top of its observed range.

The honest limits: Kresmion's cluster table is young, with 39 daily snapshots since May 23, so "highest" and "lowest" claims are bounded by six weeks of history. The sector grouping is Kresmion's own five ticker classification on today's board, Applied Materials, Nvidia, Kulicke and Soffa, Credo and Marvell, and the numbers would shift under a different definition. Form 4 filings arrive with a lag of up to two business days, so the chip names' trades are known through July 1 and filings from the July 2 session may still be in transit. And part of the signal is already in price after two down weeks in the sector. What would change the read is specific: a chip insider buy cluster appearing for the first time, or the sell-side share receding as June's cluster windows roll off without fresh prints behind them.

Frequently asked questions

What is an insider sell cluster?

Kresmion groups SEC Form 4 filings into clusters when three or more insiders at the same company trade in the same direction within a rolling four week window. A cluster of sales by multiple executives is harder to explain away than a single sale, because personal reasons such as tax bills or scheduled diversification plans are individual, while a cluster requires several decision makers acting in the same window.

Who exactly is selling at the five companies?

At Applied Materials, chief executive Gary Dickerson sold $41.9 million in the four week window, alongside the semiconductor products group president and the chief technology officer. At Nvidia, chief executive Jen-Hsun Huang, chief financial officer Colette Kress and three executive vice presidents all sold on June 17. Kulicke and Soffa's interim chief executive and CFO sold $7.3 million on June 18. Credo's cluster includes its chief financial officer, and Marvell's includes its chief executive, CFO and president.

Are insider sales a reliable signal?

Individually, no. Most executive selling is routine, and much of it is pre scheduled through 10b5-1 plans. What carries more information is breadth and asymmetry: five companies in one sector showing simultaneous sell clusters with C-suite participation, while the same sector has produced zero buy clusters in the six weeks Kresmion has tracked them. That asymmetry is a fact about the sector, not a forecast about its stocks.

Did the market react to this selling?

The sector has lagged recently. The semiconductor ETF SMH fell 3.2 percent last week, its second consecutive losing week, even as the Dow closed the week at a record and the S&P 500 rose 1.8 percent. Whether that reflects the insider selling or unrelated rotation is not something this data can settle. The insider wave began in mid June while the sector was still strong, so the selling preceded the underperformance rather than following it.