Director Stephen Luczo continues to buy when others retreat. This time he bought $1.1m of AT&T at $29.38. When rates are near zero AT&T is paying out 7% dividend yield. He added to his Morgan Stanley bet $734.9K at $38.68. Geoffrey Yang bought 6,754 at $29.39 on 4/24/20.
Several insiders participated in a secondary for Darden at $58.5. DRI closed today at $78.50
Director Gerber bought $3 million of Haliburton at $8.68. HAL closed today at $8.91. This one takes balls and Gerber has them as he bought $1 million on March 13th at $6.78
Director Plants bought 95,238 Cutera Inc at $10.50. CUTR closed 30% higher today at $13.84.
Groupon Director Leonsis bought 1,000,000 shares of Groupon at $0.95. GRPN rocketed 14% today closing at $1.24.
Director Goldfarb bought 5,530 shares of Schwab at $36.18. Volumes are up at brokerages. Margin rates can’t go lower when rates are at zero. SCHW closed at $36.84
Insiders sell stock for many reasons, but they generally buy for just one – to make money. THE INSIDERS FUND invests in companies at or near prices that management has been willing to invest significant amounts of their own money in. After all, who knows a business better than the people running it? You’ve always heard the best information is inside information. This is as close to “insider information” that an ordinary investor is likely to see- and it’s entirely legal. Officers, directors, and 10% owners are required to inform the public through a Form 4 Filing any transaction, buy, sell, exercise, or any other with 48 hours of doing so. This info is available for free from the SEC’s Web site, Edgar, although we subscribe to the Washington Service as they provide a way to manage and make sense of the vast realms of data.
As a rule, we only look at material amounts of money, $200 thousand or more, as anything less could just be window dressing. The bar is different from 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 is large planned sale programs that start without warning. Unfortunately, the public information disclosure requirements about these programs referred to as Rule 10b5-1 is horrendously poor. I also generally ignore 10 percent shareholders as they tend to be OPM (other people’s money) and perhaps not the smart money we are trying to read the tea leaves on.
Of course insiders can also be wrong about their Company’s prospects. They can easily be wrong about how much others will value them, and in many cases, maybe most cases have no more idea what the future may hold than you or I. In short, you can lose money following them. We have and we curse aloud, what were they thinking! Needless to say, past good fortune is no guarantee of future success. We may own positions, long or short, in any of these names and are under no obligation to disclose that. We welcome your comments on our analysis.
This blog is solely for educational purposes and the author’s own amusement. Investing with The Insiders Fund is for qualified investors and by Prospectus only. Nothing herein should be construed otherwise. To learn more about our strategy, visit our website. If you would like to hear more about how you can get involved with the Insiders Fund, please schedule some time on my calendar.
Prosperous Trading,
Harvey Sax
