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Story: Caterpillar CEO Joseph Creed Sells $26.2 Million in Shares Without SEC Trading Plan

By Julie Binoche

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No Trading Plan on File. Here's where it gets murky. Creed's transaction wasn't covered by a Rule 10b5-1(c) trading plan —…

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What Creed Still Holds. The 2021 options are gone now — exercised down to zero.

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Broader Context for Insider Sales. Executive stock sales at this scale aren't unusual in corporate America.

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Joseph Creed sold. Big. And the timing is raising eyebrows across Wall Street.

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Caterpillar's CEO exercised stock options from 2021 and dumped 32,401 shares, pulling in $26.2 million in proceeds at a weighted average price of $808.98 per share.

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The strike price on those 2021 options? $219.76. That's a pretty wide gap from $808 and change.

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Here's where it gets murky. Creed's transaction wasn't covered by a Rule 10b5-1(c) trading plan — the SEC framework, tightened up in 2023, that requires insiders to disclose when…

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Without a 10b5-1 plan on file, there's no paper trail showing Creed committed to selling before he had access to any market-moving information.

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The timing makes it harder to ignore. Creed sold shortly after Caterpillar posted what he himself called a historic quarter — $20 billion in sales and revenues in a single…

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The 2021 options are gone now — exercised down to zero. But Creed isn't exactly walking away from the table.

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More context: Bitcoin Hashrate Plummets as Miners Shift Focus to AI Opportunities, Says CEO

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So the sale reduces his immediate holdings, sure. But it doesn't really signal a clean break from Caterpillar. He's still heavily tied to how the stock performs going forward.

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That said, the 16% drop since the earnings high is the kind of move that makes a $26.2 million sale look well-timed — whether it was planned that way or not.

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Executive stock sales at this scale aren't unusual in corporate America. Leaders at large industrial companies routinely exercise options when prices are favorable, especially…

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But the lack of a trading plan filing adds friction to what might otherwise be a clean story.

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