The Federal Reserve surprised the pundits, slashing 50 basis points instead of 25. Some may think this extraordinarily large cut in interest rates may have had something to do with election-year politics. I don’t know why. Donald Trump hired Powel and was almost sure to fire him or not put him up for renewal if he didn’t lower rates. Now, if elected, he is sure to fire Powell as he is likely to blame him for helping Harris. Of course, no commentators will say this, but this is likely what happened and almost certainly what will happen if Trump gets elected.
Don’t expect much insider buying for the next three weeks. We are in the hear of darkness, the blackout period where insiders are prohibited from purchasing their own shares near the quarterly earnings announcements. They have figured how to sell them though in the 105-1 loophole the SEC provides.
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Name: Robert W Gerrity
Position: Chief Executive Officer
Transaction Date: 2023-09-13 Shares Bought: 10,000 Average Price Paid: $24.73 Cost: $247,300
Company: Vitesse Energy Inc. (VTS)
Name: James P Henderson
Position: Chief Financial Officer
Transaction Date: 2023-09-14 Shares Bought: 10,000 Average Price Paid: $22.99 Cost: $229,900
Company: Vitesse Energy Inc. (VTS)
Vitesse Energy, Inc. was created in 2014 and is headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colorado. Vitesse Energy, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, acquires, develops, and produces non-operated oil and gas properties in the United States. The company owns and buys non-operated working and royalty interests in Williston Basin properties in North Dakota and Montana. The corporation also owns non-operating interests in Central Rockies holdings in Colorado and Wyoming.
Mr. Robert W. Gerrity, also known as Bob, has been the Chairman of the Board of Vitesse Energy, LLC since January 13, 2023, and the company’s CEO and Director since August 5, 2022. Vitesse started in the Bakken when Bob invested his own money to buy non-operated working interest acreage 2010. Bob has personally been involved in more than 500 gross wells to date. Bob began his career in the oil sector in 1982 when he purchased an interest in four newly drilled Codell wells in Colorado’s Wattenberg Field. He founded Gerrity Oil and Gas Corporation (Gerrity Oil) as a low-cost operator that delivered economic performance in a low-price market.
James “Jimmy” Henderson has been named as Vitesse’s Chief Financial Officer, beginning September 1, 2023, and is in charge of all financial aspects of the company. Jimmy has over 30 years of expertise in the oil and gas sector, including management, finance, and accounting. He most recently served as Executive Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer of Whiting Petroleum, which emerged from bankruptcy in September 2020 and merged with Oasis Petroleum in July 2022 to become Chord Energy. Jimmy previously held the same position at SRC Energy and Kodiak Oil & Gas, expanding each company through acquisitions and capital expenditures. Jimmy worked in increasingly responsible positions with Western Gas Resources, Aspect Energy, and Pennzoil Company before taking on these senior responsibilities. Jimmy earned a B.B.A. in Accounting from Texas Tech University and a Master of Business Administration from Regis University.
Opinion: Vitesse is a royalty trust, and it looks pretty good. The current dividend yield is 8.47%. If Kamal Harris wins the elections, the oil and gas business will get tougher, and commodity prices and stocks will all go higher as she is very much an environmentalist. This is the standard playbook.
Name: Mark Lappe
Position: Chief Executive Officer
Transaction Date: 2024-09-06 Shares Bought: 44,000 Average Price Paid: $15.25 Cost: $671,150
Company: Inhibrx Biosciences Inc. (INBX)
Inhibrx Biosciences, Inc., founded in 2024, is headquartered in La Jolla, California. The firm is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops biological therapies for individuals with life-threatening conditions. INBRX-109, a tetravalent therapeutic candidate targeting death-receptor 5 that is in phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of unresectable or metastatic conventional chondrosarcoma; and INBRX-106, a hexavalent sdAb-based therapeutic candidate targeting OX4 that is in phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of metastatic solid tumor, non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, gastric (GIST), and gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma (GEA) cancer, renal cell carcinoma, and urothelial (transitional) cell carcinoma.
Mr. Lappe co-founded Inhibrx in 2010 and has been CEO since its establishment. He is also the Chairman of our Board of Directors. Mr. Lappe has over 30 years of experience in senior management, investment management, and executive recruiting, having assembled executive teams for over 40 start-up biotechnology and medical device firms. Before creating Inhibrx, Mr. Lappe was the founder and Managing Partner of Efficacy Biotech Fund, which made strategic investments in publicly traded biotechnology firms.
Opinion: On July 23rd,Fly on the Wall said JMP Securities analyst Reni Benjamin initiated coverage of Inhibrx with a Market Perform rating without a price target following Sanofi’s acquisition of INBRX-101 and subsequent spinout of the remaining assets. The analyst believes the company is well capitalized to develop its hexavalent OR40 agonist and DR5 agonist but sees the shares as fairly valued. Insiders clearly disagreed with their aggressive buying of this name. I’d go all in on a speculative bet here.
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Name: Gary Guidry
Position: President and CEO
Transaction Date: 2024-09-17 Shares Bought: 100,000 Average Price Paid: $6.17 Cost: $617,000
Company: Gran Tierra Energy Inc. (GTE)
Gran Tierra Energy Inc. was created in 2003 and is based in Calgary, Canada. Gran Tierra Energy Inc., along with its subsidiaries, is a corporation engaged in oil and gas exploration and production, with properties in Colombia and Ecuador. The Colombian properties accounted for 94% of proven reserves NAR as of December 31, 2023.
Gary Stephen Guidry is now employed with Gran Tierra Energy, Inc. as President, CEO, and Non-Independent Director since 2015; Africa Oil Corp. as an Independent Director since 2008; and the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of AB as a Member. Before joining Gran Tierra, Mr. Guidry was President and CEO of Caracal Energy Inc., a London Stock Exchange-listed oil and gas firm with operations in Chad, Africa. In 2014, Mr. Guidry received the Oil Council Executive of the Year award for his leadership position at Caracal. Before joining Caracal, Mr. Guidry was President and CEO of Orion Oil and Gas, which operated in western Canada from mid-2009 to mid-2011, when it merged. From May 2005 to December 2008, he was the President and CEO of Tanganyika Oil Company, which operated in Syria and Egypt. Prior to Tanganyika, Mr. Guidry was the CEO of Calpine Natural Gas Trust. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University in 1980.
Opinion: You don’t have to go to the jungles of Columbia to find oil and gas values.
Name: Jason Stabell
Position: Chief Executive Officer
Transaction Date: 2024-09-18 Shares Bought: 74,000 Average Price Paid: $5.05 Cost: $373,700
Company: Epsilon Energy Ltd. (EPSN)
Name: Andrew Williamson
Position: Chief Financial Officer
Transaction Date: 2024-09-18 Shares Bought: 50,000 Average Price Paid: $5.05 Cost: $252,500
Company: Epsilon Energy Ltd. (EPSN)
Epsilon Energy Ltd. was established in 2005 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada. Epsilon Energy Ltd., a North American onshore independent natural gas and oil business, is involved in the acquisition, development, gathering, and production of natural gas and oil reserves in the United States. The corporation operates in two segments: upstream and gathering system. The Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania produces natural gas. In contrast, the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, as well as the Anadarko Basin in Oklahoma, produces oil, natural gas liquids, and natural gas.
Jason Stabell became Epsilon’s Chief Executive Officer on July 1, 2022. Mr. Stabell has worked in the energy industry since 1998, primarily in upstream exploration and production. He most recently worked as President and CEO of Merlon International, LLC, a privately held company with holdings in Egypt’s Western Desert and the United States Gulf Coast sold in 2019 to a publicly traded UK corporation, where he served as an advisor until 2021. He formerly worked as CFO and eventually President of Merlon Petroleum Company, a privately held company with interests in the US Gulf Coast and Egypt that was sold in 2006. He started his career at Salomon Smith Barney as an analyst in the Planning and Analysis Group. Mr. Stabell has also been active as a private investor in recent years. He holds a BA in Economics from Williams College. He has served on several company boards, including ESI Energy Services Inc. and Layline Petroleum LLC.
Andrew Williamson has spent his whole career in the energy industry. From 2012 to early 2019, he was Merlon International, LLC’s Corporate Development Manager and then Vice President of Finance (CFO). He recently worked as the Corporate Strategy Manager at Petrosantander Inc. Mr. Williamson began his career as a management consultant, advising energy customers on transaction due diligence, growth strategy, and cost reduction. He earned a BBA in Finance and Political Science from Southern Methodist University.
Opinion: I think oil and gas must be one of the worst, if not the worst, performing sectors this year in spite of the move away from the rapid adoption of EVs and now the embrace of massive electrical demands from new AI data centers. Go figure. Let’s see if we see more buying in the brand name oil and gas companies before I plunge down the gas tank any further.
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You can be an insider, too– by clicking here
Insiders sell the stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money. You’ve always heard the best information is inside information. Everyone with any stock market experience pays close attention to what insiders are doing. After all, who knows a business better than the people running it? Officers, directors, and 10% owners are required to inform the public through a Form 4 Filing of any transaction, buy, sell, exercise, or any other within 48 hours of doing so. This info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site, Edgar, although we subscribe to SECForm4 as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data. I’ve tried a lot of vendors. SECForm4 is one of the smaller ones, but I like supporting Frank. He is not arrogant. He’s helpful and has great prices. He also trades on his own data, so I like people that eat what they kill.
The bar is different from selling because the natural state of management is to be a seller. This is because most companies provide significant amounts of management compensation packages as stock and options. Therefore, we analyze unusual patterns with selling, such as insiders selling 25 percent or more of their holdings or multiple insiders selling near 52-week lows. Another red flag is large planned sale programs that start without warning. Unfortunately, the public information disclosure requirements about these programs, referred to as Rule 10b5-1, are horrendously poor. Also, planned sales that pop up out of nowhere are basically sales and are seeking cover under this corporate welfare loophole. I also generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and perhaps not the smart money on which we are trying to read the tea leaves. I say generally because some 10% shareholders are great investors. Think Warren Buffett and others
Of course, insiders can also be wrong about their Company’s prospects. Don’t let anyone fool you into believing they never make mistakes. Do your own analysis. They can easily be wrong, and in many cases, maybe most cases, have no more idea what the future may hold than you or me. In short, you can lose money following them. We have, and we curse aloud; what were they thinking!
We like Fly on the Wall for keeping up with what events might be happening, analysts’ comments, and whatever else could be moving the stock. Dow Jones news service is an essential tool, but many services pick up their feed like they do Bloomberg. For quick financial analysis, it’s hard to beat Old School Value.
A big callout to my assistant Ambreen who sets up this conversation by listing the notable buys that I’ve identified. She probes the 10k for a reasonable description of the business. I’ve found that to be the most accurate and succinct place to find out what a business actually does.
This blog is solely for educational purposes and the author’s own amusement. Think of the blog as part of my personal investment journal that I am willing to share with the DIY investor. There are also many parts that I am not willing to share if I think it could influence trading action or be detrimental to the Fund’s partners. We could be long, short, or have no position at all in any of the stocks mentioned and express no written or implied obligation to disclose any of that.
The Insiders Fund is for qualified investors and by Prospectus only. Nothing herein should be construed otherwise. THE INSIDERS FUND prefers to invest in companies at or near prices that management has been willing to invest significant amounts of their own money in, but we have no requirement to do so. We also invest in many companies in anticipation of future insider buying or with the expectation that there is none at all.
You can be an insider, too– by clicking here
Prosperous Trading,
