How to Read an SEC Form 4 Filing: Using the DWAC Insider Trades as a Real-World Example

# How to Read an SEC Form 4 Filing: Using the DWAC Insider Trades as a Real-World Example

Nobel Pardon Prize Research Desk | October 1, 2025 | Washington, D.C.

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If you have ever wanted to know whether a company's own executives are buying or selling its stock, the SEC's Form 4 is the document that tells you — and it's freely available to anyone who knows where to look. The DWAC insider trading case, in which former board member Bruce Garelick was convicted of securities fraud in part for failing to file Form 4s he was legally required to submit, makes this otherwise dry regulatory form suddenly very vivid.

What Is Form 4?

Under Section 16(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, corporate insiders — defined as officers, directors, and shareholders owning more than 10% of a company's stock — must report any purchase or sale of company securities within two business days of the transaction. The vehicle for that report is SEC Form 4, officially called the "Statement of Changes in Beneficial Ownership."

The SEC's own explainer on Forms 3, 4, and 5 lays out the structure clearly. Form 4 is a two-page document. Here is what each section contains:

| Section | What It Tells You |

|---------|------------------|

| Header | Name of the insider, company name, ticker, and filing date |

| Relationship | Whether the filer is an officer, director, or 10%+ owner |

| Table I | Non-derivative securities (common stock): date, transaction code, shares, price |

| Table II | Derivative securities (options, warrants): exercise price, expiration, conversion |

| Footnotes | Context the filer wants to add — often explains the "why" behind a trade |

The most important transaction codes in Table I are P (open-market purchase), S (open-market sale), and M (exercise of a derivative security). When an insider is buying on the open market with their own money, that is a P-code transaction — and it tends to carry the most signal about their expectations.

The DWAC Case: A Real Consequence for Non-Filing

Bruce Garelick served on DWAC's board of directors from July 8, 2021 through June 22, 2022. During that period, he purchased 5,320 DWAC units between September 3 and September 23, 2021, according to the SEC's civil complaint. Every one of those transactions should have generated a Form 4 filed within two business days.

None were filed.

The SEC charged Garelick with violating Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act and Rule 16a-3 thereunder — the filing requirement itself — in addition to the underlying insider trading charges. His failure to file was not merely a technicality: it meant the market never received the legally required disclosure that a DWAC director was purchasing large quantities of company stock in the weeks before a major, undisclosed merger announcement.

How to Find Form 4 Filings Yourself

• Go to SEC EDGAR (the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system).
• Search for the company name or ticker (e.g., "DWAC" or "DJT" for the post-merger Trump Media stock).
• Filter by filing type "4" to see all Form 4 submissions.
• Click any filing to see the actual transaction table.

You can also search by the individual — searching "Bruce Garelick" in EDGAR will show you his filing history across any company where he held an insider role.

Using nobelpardonprize.org/djt as a Research Tool

The Nobel Pardon Prize DJT research dashboard connects the insider trading narrative to the underlying Form 4 obligations, linking directly to the SEC complaint sections that describe Garelick's filing failures. For students writing about securities disclosure, market transparency, or corporate governance, this is a ready-made case study with all primary sources annotated in one place.

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How to Cite This for Your Assignment

APA (7th ed.)

Nobel Pardon Prize Research Desk. (2025, October 1). How to read an SEC Form 4 filing: Using the DWAC insider trades as a real-world example. Nobel Pardon Prize. https://nobelpardonprize.org/djt

MLA (9th ed.)

"How to Read an SEC Form 4 Filing: Using the DWAC Insider Trades as a Real-World Example." Nobel Pardon Prize Research Desk, 1 Oct. 2025, nobelpardonprize.org/djt.

For the primary source:

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2023). Insider transactions and Forms 3, 4, and 5 [Investor publication]. https://www.sec.gov/files/forms-3-4-5.pdf

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Research Hub

Explore the full DWAC enforcement record — including the specific sections of the SEC complaint addressing Garelick's Form 4 failures — at the Nobel Pardon Prize DJT Research Dashboard.