Form 144

What is it: Form 144 is filed when an affiliate or non-affiliate of an issuer intends to resell restricted or control securities aggregately exceeds 5,000 shares or $50,000 within the next three months. Several conditions must be satisfied to be eligible for the resale. Among which the most important are
1) The issuer must have adequate public information.
2) The security holder must have held the security for at least six months.
3) The resale volume must be less than 1% of the issuer's shares outstanding, and less than the average trading volume of the preceding four calendar weeks.
If the shares were not sold within three-month period, an amendment must be filed.

Filing Time:

Related Form(s):
Form 4

Tips: About 700~1,000 Form 144 are filed each year by 300~400 different filers (2008~2014 statistics). A person files Form 144 to show "intention to sell" but has no obligation to do so. If the filing person of Form 144 is an insider, investors can track Form 4 to see whether and how the resale was implemented. For non-insider, the only way to know whether the resale was implemented is to track the amendment (about 20 Form 144/A are filed each year) that withdraws the related intention to sell.