SEC Form 4 Instructions: How to Complete and File It Correctly

Form 4's general instructions, printed on the SEC's own form, cover four things most explainers skip: the filing must be electronic, it can be signed on the insider's behalf, it has two tables that cover different kinds of securities, and a mistake gets fixed with an amendment rather than a new filing from scratch.

This post walks through those instructions in the order a filer actually needs them, from format and signature down to correcting an error. For the transaction codes themselves and what each one means, see SEC Form 4 Explained, which this post does not repeat.

Who the instructions apply to

Form 4 instructions apply to any "reporting person" under Section 16(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: a company's officers and directors, and anyone who beneficially owns more than 10% of a registered class of its equity securities. Beneficial ownership can include shares held indirectly through a trust, a spouse or an entity the reporting person controls, and the instructions require those indirect holdings to be reported too, with a footnote explaining the relationship.

A reporting person's very first disclosure is Form 3, filed when they first become an insider. Form 4 is for every reportable change after that.

The filing must be electronic

The form's general instructions state that a reporting person must file in electronic format through EDGAR, the SEC's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system. There is no option to mail in a Form 4 as routine practice.

Paper filing exists only as a narrow hardship exception, for a filer who can show that electronic filing imposes an undue burden, and it requires separate SEC approval in advance. In practice, almost every Form 4 on EDGAR today was prepared and submitted electronically, usually through filing agent software or a law firm's EDGAR access codes rather than the SEC's own web forms directly.

Who can actually sign it

This is the part of the instructions that surprises people who assume an insider personally logs in and submits their own filing: a Form 4 can be signed by the reporting person, or by anyone else acting as their attorney-in-fact under a power of attorney. The power of attorney itself is usually filed once as an exhibit, naming the people (often at a law firm or the company's legal department) authorized to prepare and sign future Section 16 filings on the insider's behalf, and it generally stays in effect until the filer's reporting obligation ends or it is revoked in writing.

That is why so many Form 4 signature blocks read "/s/ Jane Doe, Attorney-in-Fact" rather than the reporting person's own name alone. The conformed signature satisfies the instructions either way, as long as a valid power of attorney is on file.

Table I and Table II: what goes where

The instructions split every transaction and holding into two tables, based on the kind of security:

Each line in either table needs the transaction date, a one letter transaction code, the number of securities, the price if one applies, whether the position increased or decreased, the resulting total position, and whether the shares are held directly or indirectly. Form 4 Transaction Codes covers what each code means in detail.

Footnotes and the remarks section

The instructions expect footnotes wherever a number alone would not be clear: an indirect holding's relationship to the reporting person, the vesting schedule behind a derivative security, or the reason a transaction is exempt from the normal reporting timeline. The "Remarks" field at the bottom of the form is free text for anything the structured fields cannot capture, such as noting that a sale was made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan adopted on a specific date.

Fixing a mistake: Form 4/A

If a Form 4 is filed with an error, such as the wrong share count or a missing transaction, the instructions call for an amendment on Form 4/A, not a brand new original filing. The amendment restates the corrected information and is linked to the original filing it amends. EDGAR keeps both the original and the amendment on the public record, so anyone pulling the filing history sees the correction alongside what was first reported.

Working with Form 4 data in code

Reading one insider's Form 4 history on EDGAR works for a single company at a time, and separating Table I common stock activity from Table II derivative activity across many filers by hand is slow.

SecFeed parses every Form 4 into rows and tags which table each row came from. To pull derivative security activity reported on Form 4 filings:

curl "https://secfeedapi.com/v1/insider-trading?formType=4&table=II&size=10" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

Each row includes the filer, the security, the transaction details and which table it was reported under:

{
  "owner": "JANE SMITH",
  "issuer": "EXAMPLE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LLC",
  "ticker": "EXCP",
  "formType": "4",
  "table": "II",
  "securityTitle": "Stock Option",
  "code": "M",
  "transactionDate": "2026-10-05",
  "shares": 10000,
  "exercisePrice": 18.5,
  "sharesOwnedAfter": 42000
}

To check whether a specific filing was signed by the reporting person or an attorney-in-fact, pull the filing's own documents through the files endpoint and look at the signature block, since that detail is not part of the structured transaction data. In Python, filtering a company's Form 4 history to Table I activity only:

from secfeed import Client

sf = Client("YOUR_API_KEY")
rows = sf.insider_trades(ticker="NVDA", form_type="4", table="I")
for r in rows:
    print(r["owner"], r["code"], r["shares"], r["transactionDate"])

The full field list, including footnote text, is documented on the Form 4 dataset page, and the insider trading API covers Forms 3, 4 and 5 together.

Frequently asked questions

Can a Form 4 be filed on paper?

Only under a hardship exemption approved by the SEC in advance. The form's own instructions require electronic filing through EDGAR as the default and only practical method.

Does the insider have to sign their own Form 4?

No. The instructions allow an attorney-in-fact to sign on the reporting person's behalf under a power of attorney, which is why many filings are signed by a lawyer or compliance officer rather than the insider directly.

What is the difference between Table I and Table II on a Form 4?

Table I reports non-derivative securities such as common stock. Table II reports derivative securities such as stock options, warrants and unsettled restricted stock units.

How do you correct a mistake on a filed Form 4?

File a Form 4/A, which amends the original filing with corrected information. EDGAR keeps the original and the amendment both on the public record.

Is there a filing fee for Form 4?

No. Section 16 ownership reports, including Forms 3, 4 and 5, do not carry an SEC filing fee the way some registration statements do.