Directors’ dealings in a sideways market
August 6, 2026
A blog post in the summer of 2024 focused on directors riding the waves of success in the stock market. Back then, the first half of 2024 saw a strong performance in the German stock market producing positive investment returns of >8% for the DAX and >200 directors dealing were recorded. In the first half of 2026, the index performance was around 2% and less than 150 directors bought stocks of their companies. This leads to the question: Is it possible to generate strong investment returns with directors’ dealings in a sideways market? BOSS STOCKS analyzed 139 directors’ dealings (stock acquisitions) in the German DAX which took place in the first half of 2026 and then focused specifically on those that outperformed the index.
Replication performance of directors’ dealings can outperform stock index by up to 18x
Here are three examples:
- Stefan Klebert has been CEO of GEA since 2019. In mid-May and early June, he undertook two stock acquisitions with a cumulative value of nearly 600,000 EUR when the GEA stock price was in the range of 53.50 to 55.50 EUR. At the time of the first dealing, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) indicated that the GEA stock was oversold. Until the end of June, the average investment return from the two stock purchases accounted for nearly 9%.
- Anna Dimitrova was appointed CFO of Zalando in January 2026. By the end of May, Zalando stocks had risen sharply scratching the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) from below when she engaged in her first stock acquisition in her new role. What followed was stock growth of >9% over the course of June.
- Harm Ohlmeyer has been with Adidas since 1998 and became CFO almost a decade ago. Throughout March 2026, Adidas stock had been correcting downwards and the RSI indicated that it was oversold when he acquired stocks worth more than 300,000 EUR. Also, the Adidas CEO, Bjørn Gulden, engaged in a director dealing earlier in the same month. In the following three months, Adidas stocks increased by >36% outperforming the DAX by 18x.
Discover the directors’ dealings for strong investment returns with BOSS STOCKS
The results show that when the market goes sideways directors’ dealings can generate strong investment returns. BOSS STOCKS helps to replicate such directors’ dealings.