Name: G. Kennedy Thompson
Position: Director
Transaction Date: 10-20-2025 Shares Bought: 5,000 shares an Average Price Paid of $87.63 for Cost: $438,150
Company: Pinnacle Financial Partners Inc. (PNFP):
Pinnacle Financial Partners is a financial holding company headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, and the parent company of Pinnacle Bank, a Tennessee state-chartered bank. Founded in 2000, the company has expanded through both acquisitions and organic growth to operate 137 locations across Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Maryland, and Florida. Pinnacle Financial offers a full range of banking, investment, trust, mortgage, and insurance services to businesses, entrepreneurs, and individuals.
G. Kennedy Thompson has served as a director of Pinnacle Financial Partners, Inc. since June 16, 2017. Prior to joining the board, he was Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Wachovia Corporation, and later became a partner at Aquiline Capital Partners LLC, a New York-based private equity firm specializing in financial services. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Business Administration from Wake Forest University.
Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy Opinion: Pinnacle Financial Partners is an interesting mid-sized bank with decent execution, insider buying, and some tailwinds in commercial loan growth. But the big caveat: the growth engine is decelerating, net margin is under strain, and banking sector headwinds remain real (deposit costs, credit reserves). My rough valuation shows limited upside unless margin expansion or growth impresses. I’d lean neutral-to-cautious — the stock isn’t screaming “must buy” right now, but it’s not broken either. If you believe PNFP can hold or improve margin and reaccelerate loan growth, there’s upside. If not, downside risk to ~$60-$70 exists. Treat this as a conditional growth-bank play, not a slam-dunk compounder.
Name: Robert Hamilton Steers
Position: Executive Chairman, 10% Owner
Transaction Date: 10-20-2025 Shares Bought: 40,539 shares an Average Price Paid of $70.21 for Cost: $2,846,316
Company: Cohen & Steers Inc. (CNS):
Cohen & Steers, Inc., founded in 1986 and headquartered in New York, is a publicly traded asset management holding company specializing in real assets and alternative income. The company’s subsidiaries provide investment management services to institutional clients, including pension funds, endowments, and foundations. It manages equity, fixed income, balanced, multi-asset, and commodity portfolios, as well as mutual funds and hedge funds. Cohen & Steers invests globally across public equity, fixed income, and commodity markets, with a particular focus on real estate, infrastructure, natural resource equities, and preferred securities.
Robert Hamilton Steers, Executive Chairman and founding member of Cohen & Steers, Inc., has played a pivotal role in the firm’s growth and success. He co-founded the company with Martin Cohen in 1986 after serving as Senior Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at National Securities & Research Corporation from 1982 to 1986. Prior to that, he held the position of Vice President at Citibank from 1977 to 1982. Steers holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University and a Master of Business Administration from The George Washington University.
Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy Opinion:
Cohen & Steers is a solid pick if you believe the real‐assets / alternative income thematic will accelerate in the coming years, and if you expect capital flows back into this niche. The firm has the specialization, track record and structural positioning. But make no mistake: you’re buying a firm whose fate is tied to flows, markets, interest rates — not a fortress with built‐in margin insulation.
My rough valuation suggests the stock is roughly fairly valued in the base case — you’re not getting deep margin of safety. The upside exists, but it’s conditional. If flows stagnate or reverse, or real asset valuations falter, the downside could be meaningful. Given the limited insider buying signal and the uncertainty of flow momentum, I’d lean neutral rather than bullish. If you’re bullish on real asset allocation trends, you might overweight; if you’re cautious on flows or conditions, consider waiting for clearer signs of AUM acceleration or client wins.
Name: Stephen F. Angel
Position: President & CEO
Transaction Date: 10-20-2025 Shares Bought: 55,000 shares an Average Price Paid of $36.87 for Cost: $2,027,850
Company: CSX Corp. (CSX):
CSX Corporation, founded in 1978 and headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, provides rail-based freight transportation services across the United States and Canada through its rail and trucking operations. The company transports intermodal containers, trailers, and bulk commodities such as chemicals, agricultural products, minerals, automotive goods, forest products, fertilizers, metals, coal, coke, and iron ore. It also offers intermodal services through a network of more than 30 terminals, providing drayage, rail-to-truck transfers, and bulk handling operations. CSX operates a rail network spanning approximately 20,000 route miles, serving major population centers in 26 states, the District of Columbia, and parts of Canada. The company also manages a fleet of about 3,500 locomotives that support production and distribution facilities through extensive track connections.
Stephen F. Angel was appointed to the board of directors and named President and Chief Executive Officer of CSX Corporation in September 2025. He began his career at General Electric, where he spent more than 20 years in locomotive and rail operations, accumulating over 45 years of leadership experience in the industrial sector. Angel later held senior executive positions at Linde plc and Praxair. A native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he holds a Master of Business Administration from Loyola College in Baltimore and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University.
Insomniac Hedge Fund Guy Opinion: CSX is a classic “big-rail” franchise with real scale and structural advantages — but lately it looks like the market is giving little credit for that. Volumes are weak, key segments are shrinking, and margins are under pressure. My rough DCF suggests the current stock price doesn’t leave much margin of safety. Unless CSX can reaccelerate intermodal growth, diversify away from shrinking coal/fuel segments, and expand margins materially, you’re buying a mature business with minimal growth upside. If you believe infrastructure tailwinds or intermodal secular growth are going to surprise to the upside, then CSX may have upside — but I lean neutral to cautious. It’s not a high-risk bet, but it’s also not a compelling value right now.
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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 as soon as practically possible. 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. When I have time, over the weekend, I’ll add some preliminary analysis to the Opinion at the end. Sometimes I won’t update this for a couple of weeks or more. A good way to use this blog is as I do, it’s a reference point and filing cabinet for various stocks with notable insider buying. It’s one of many tools I use. I regularly live on Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude, and occasionally Microsoft Copilot. I find the footnotes research very helpful in eliminating errors from AI hallucinations but these opinions are likely to contain inaccuracies due to the nature of the LLM’s.
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.
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Prosperous Trading,
