$DDR,$RDN,$FB,$GRMN,$ORCL,$MA,$NYT,$DOCU,$BMN,$PYPL,$CRM,$MASI,$ALXN

In this report, we examine stocks that C-level officers and directors bought and sold ending the week of May 4, 2018.

Insiders sell stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money.  As a standard, we only look at material amounts of money, $100 thousand or more, as anything less could just be window dressing.

The bar is different with selling, because the natural state of management is to be sellers. This is because most companies provide significant amounts of management compensation packages as stock. Therefore, with selling, we analyze for unusual patterns, such as insiders selling 25 percent or more of their holdings or multiple insiders selling near 52 week lows.

Another red flag are large planned sale programs that start without warning. We generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and not the SMART money we are trying to go to school on.  Although this info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site , Edgar, we subscribe to the Washington Service as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data.

To learn more about our strategy, visit our website here. We welcome your comments on our analysis. We may own positions, long or short, in any of these names and are under no obligation to disclose that.

 

Buying

DDR, DDR  Director Otto is at it again swooping in to buy $19.1 million in this shopping center REIT at an average price fo $7.32.  DDR now yields 10.48%. Is that enough to compensate investors for the increased risk to the space do to online commerce?  We’re not sure about about that, so we have refrained from buying.

Radian, RDN Group 4 insiders buys $728 thousand worth of stock at an average price of $14.91 including VP Brummer’s purchase of $286.3 thousand.  I’m not a fan of the mortgage insurance business as it is very opaque and beyond our abilities to value.

Alexion Pharmaceutical, ALXN Dir Coughlin buys 10,000 at $120.79

Bristol Myers, BMY Dir Paliwal buys 4,770 at $52.40

Cypress Semiconductor, CY CEO El-Khoury buys 10,000 at $15.03

Altria, MO Dir Newman buys 5345 at $56.19

Raytheon, RTN Dir Paliwal buys 1,291 at $205

Carters, Inc, CRI Dir Pulver buys 3,000 at $100.32

Mohawk Industries, MHK Industries MHK Dir Balcaen buys 66,199 at $209

Selling

Facebook, FB CEO Zuckerberg sells $428 million while apologizing profusely

 

Garmin, GRMN Chairman Kao sold $69.5 million of Garmin

 

Oracle, ORCL Officer Kurian unloads a cool $88.4 million

 

Mastercard, MA CEO Banga sells $44.4 million

 

New York Times, NYT  Carlos Slim sells $99 million of “failing New York Times”.

 

Docusign, DOCU 5 insiders sold $80.9 million worth of IPO. Docusign was one of the hottest IPOs in some time, evidenced by the fact that the underwriters allowed insiders to sell stock on the offering.

 

Bloomin Brands, Inc, BMN 5 insiders took advantage of strong stock price performance to unload $12.2 million worth of stock.

 

PayPal Holdings, PYPL 5 insiders let go of $9.9 million worth of stock

 

Salesforce, CRM 4 insiders unload $10.5 million including CEO Benioff’s sale of $611.8k

 

Massimo, MASI 4 insiders sell $8.5 million of high flying MASI