KKR Stock Spotlight: A Confidence Score That's Already Half a Year Stale

KKR & Co (KKR) currently shows a 90-day Smart Money Convergence confidence score of 80.48, with 5 unique insider buyers and a triggered cluster alert. Read only that headline number and it looks like an actively strengthening signal. Split the same data into its 30-day and 90-day windows, though, and a very different picture shows up -- one about timing and decay, not just conviction.

The score is real, and it's also mostly history

KKR's own insider-activity data breaks this down cleanly. Over the trailing 90 days, the confidence score is 80.48 with 5 buyers and a cluster alert. Over the trailing 30 days, that same score has fallen to 58.6, with only 2 buyers and no cluster alert. The last recorded insider buy on file is dated March 4, 2026 -- and as of this data's own timestamp (July 29, 2026), that means the most recent purchase behind the "strong" 90-day number is already nearly five months old. The 90-day window hasn't refreshed with new buying; it's simply still counting an older cluster of purchases that hasn't aged out of the lookback period yet.

This is the single most important thing to check before reacting to any convergence score: when did the underlying activity actually happen, not just how strong the composite number looks today.

The institutional side is pulling the other way

SPG's institutional base was net accumulating this period; KKR's is doing close to the opposite. In the latest reporting period:

• Net institutional value change of -$14.4 billion.
• 668 net buyers vs. 710 net sellers -- more institutions reducing than adding.
• 140 new positions opened, against 258 complete exits -- nearly twice as many managers left entirely as started fresh.
• Institutional holder count fell from 1,420 (as of Dec 31, 2025) to 1,292 (as of Mar 31, 2026) -- a real drop of 128 holders in one quarter.
• Total disclosed institutional value fell from roughly $71.0 billion to $50.9 billion over the same stretch.

One honest caveat: that last figure -- total dollar value -- mixes two different things together. It falls both when institutions actually sell shares and when the stock's price drops, and KKR's share price did decline substantially across this window (the Form 4 data below shows purchases at $87-104 in February 2026, well below where insiders had been selling in mid-2025). So the value decline alone doesn't prove institutions were net-selling shares -- but the holder-count drop, the sold-out count, and net seller count all point the same direction independently of price, and together they paint a real, not merely price-driven, retreat.

Who actually bought, and who actually sold

This is where the story gets specific enough to be genuinely useful. Looking at KKR's recent Form 4 filings:

2025 sellers were the firm's co-founders. George Roberts sold 809,906 shares at $144.25 in August 2025 and 1,190,094 shares at $119.80 in June 2025. Henry Kravis sold 1,150,469 shares plus 130,925 shares around $119.80-121.67, also in June 2025. These are large blocks from two people who built and have held KKR stock for decades -- selling of this kind, from founders diversifying a massive multi-decade position, isn't inherently a bearish signal about the company's near-term prospects the way a fresh, smaller executive sale might be.

2026 buyers were the newer leadership and directors, at meaningfully lower prices. Co-CEOs Scott Nuttall and Joseph Bae both bought shares across several February 2026 transactions in the $87-104 range -- well below where Roberts and Kravis had sold seven or eight months earlier. Directors Timothy Barakett, Mary Dillon, Matt Cohler, and Robert Scully also show purchases in this window. Whether this reflects genuine conviction that the stock had become attractively priced after its decline, or a scheduled/compensation-related purchase pattern similar to what we found in our SPG spotlight, isn't something the filings themselves resolve -- but the price gap between the 2025 sales and the 2026 buys is real and worth noting either way.

Two different kinds of conviction holder

By dollar value, KKR's largest holders are the usual mega-managers: BlackRock ($4.13 billion, 0.07% of its own book), Vanguard Capital Management ($4.07 billion), Capital International Investors ($3.25 billion), State Street ($2.64 billion), and Principal Financial Group ($1.80 billion).

Ranked by conviction instead, two more recognizable names appear: Akre Capital Management at 10.13% of its disclosed portfolio, and ValueAct Holdings -- a well-known activist/value investing firm -- at 5.31%. Van Lanschot Kempen (3.52%), Farallon Capital Management (2.46%), and First Manhattan (2.41%) round out the top conviction holders. A concentrated position from a firm like ValueAct, whose whole strategy is picking a small number of positions and engaging deeply with them, is a meaningfully different kind of signal than an index fund's proportionally tiny stake.

Putting it together

KKR's Smart Money Convergence entry is a good illustration of a signal that was genuinely strong -- and is now aging. The insider buying happened, at real prices, by real people, but it stopped months ago even as the composite 90-day score hasn't caught up to that yet. Meanwhile the institutional base, taken as a whole, spent the same quarter net-reducing exposure by a real number of holders, not just a price-driven value swing. None of that erases the specific, informative detail underneath -- founders diversifying at higher prices, newer leadership buying at lower ones, and a genuine value-investing activist among the conviction holders -- but it does mean the single headline confidence number, on its own, overstates how current the underlying signal actually is.

Why the same tool shows two different numbers for one stock

It's worth pausing on why score_30d and score_90d can diverge this much for the same ticker at the same moment. Both are computed from the identical underlying Form 4 filings -- there's no separate data source for one versus the other. The difference is purely the lookback window: a purchase made 40 days ago counts toward the 90-day score but has already aged out of the 30-day score. When most of a ticker's insider buying happened in a tight window that's now more than 30 (but less than 90) days old -- exactly KKR's situation, with the cluster concentrated around February 2026 -- the two numbers necessarily diverge, and the size of that gap is itself informative: a wide gap says "this was a burst of activity that has since gone quiet," while two similar numbers would say "buying has been steady and recent."

Quick answers to common questions

Does a falling 30-day score mean the 90-day score is wrong? No -- both are accurate for what they measure, a 90-day window and a 30-day window of the same underlying data. The gap between them is exactly the useful information here: it tells you the signal is aging rather than fresh, which the 90-day number alone can't show you.

Is founder selling always something to discount? Not automatically -- context matters. Founders who've held a concentrated stake for decades selling some of it for diversification is a very different situation from a recently-hired executive selling shortly after joining. The size, timing, and the seller's role are all worth checking rather than assuming either direction by default.

Should the institutional net-selling override the insider buying signal, or vice versa? Neither automatically overrides the other -- they're different populations with different information and different incentives, exactly as our Smart Money Convergence guide describes. When they point in different directions, as they do here, that's itself useful information: it means the case for or against the stock isn't as one-sided as either signal alone would suggest.

How to look this up yourself

• KKR's stock page has the full institutional holder list, ownership history, and insider activity, including both the 30-day and 90-day confidence breakdowns.
• Smart Money shows KKR's current standing next to every other ticker with an active convergence signal.
• Insider Trades lets you pull the same person-by-person, date-by-date Form 4 detail used above for any ticker.

The bottom line

KKR's 80.48 confidence score is real, but it's carrying insider-buying activity that's already nearly five months old by the time you're reading this, while the 30-day window (58.6, 2 buyers) shows the signal has already cooled. Layer in an institutional base that was net-reducing exposure by a real number of holders this quarter, founders who sold at higher prices in 2025, and newer leadership buying at lower prices in 2026, and the actual picture is a lot more specific -- and more useful -- than a single number from a single date. Data as of July 29, 2026.