A Remarkable Coincidence in Wave Executive Trading
Eight Wave Life Sciences executives adopted 10b5-1 trading plans on two separate dates months apart, yet all eight plans executed on the same day—the day of a major clinical announcement.
On December 8, 2025 Wave Life Sciences announced positive interim results from a Phase 1 trial for their novel siRNA based obesity treatment WVE-007. The treatment was reported to show promise for weight loss without the loss of lean mass associated with GLP-1 family drugs. Following the announcement, their stock jumped from $7 at the beginning of December to $18.50 on December 8, and peaking (so far) at $21.31 on December 9.
What caught my eye was an unusual pattern in the Form 4 filings that followed.
Eight Execution Dates Converge #
On December 9, eight Wave directors and executives filed Form 4s disclosing stock sales totaling over $15 million. All eight sales were executed under 10b5-1 trading plans, pre-arranged stock sale agreements designed to provide a safe harbor against insider trading accusations. These plans are typically used for routine tax planning or portfolio diversification, with the sale dates and amounts determined well in advance.
Five insiders adopted their plans on August 6, 2025, while three others adopted theirs on March 13, 2025. Despite these different adoption dates, separated by nearly five months, all eight plans executed on the same day: December 8, the day of the WVE-007 announcement.
Trading Plans Converge
Trading Details
The chart above shows Wave’s stock price timeline with overlays for SEC 8-K filings and insider trading activity. The 10b5-1 plans are represented as arcs connecting the plan adoption date to the execution date. Data spans from 2024 through December 2025.
What Was Publicly Known #
To understand this pattern, it’s useful to consider what information was available at each plan adoption date.
When three insiders adopted plans on March 13, 2025, Wave had just released Q4 2024 financials nine days earlier.
On July 30, 2025, Wave released Q2 2025 financial results. One week later, on August 5, one day before five executives adopted their plans, Wave released an investor presentation describing their clinical portfolio. The deck included preclinical data for WVE-007 and projected that readouts for different trial cohorts would occur in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. The company also announced an amendment to their stock-based compensation policy on the same day.
Wave reiterated the Q4 2025 timeline in their Q3 earnings release on November 10 and in a corporate deck on November 17, both referencing expected trial updates in the fourth quarter.
Industry Context #
Wave’s intent to release interim INLIGHT trial data in Q4 2025 was well established in public filings. The investor deck above and the Q3 2025 earnings 8-K from November both referenced expected Q4 data releases. Based on what I have seen, the specific announcement date of December 8 was not publicly disclosed in advance.
Three executives adopted plans in March, five in August. All eight plans executed on December 8.
10b5-1 plans are intended to establish pre-set trading schedules to avoid the appearance of trading on material nonpublic information. The convergence of all eight execution dates on the day of a major clinical announcement raises questions about how common this pattern is across the industry.
Biotech companies often know trial results weeks or months before public disclosure while they prepare regulatory filings, coordinate with investigators, and plan announcements. Whether the timing pattern observed at Wave reflects standard industry practice or represents an outlier remains to be determined. We’re currently analyzing 10b5-1 trading patterns across all publicly traded biotechs with active clinical trials registered in the US to establish baseline frequency and identify similar cases.
