alphawealthfunds

Insider Purchases Last Week. Nvidia Ignites Massive CAPEX Expansion

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Something significant is happening when staid Dell Technologies is up 31% on its latest quarterly earnings. A giant uptick in capex spending is underway, and it is directly attributable to the stampede to embrace AI.   After a year or more of belt-tightening in tech spending, that moment has arrived, almost all at once, when companies realize they have to invest in AI or be disrupted or obsoleted by a Chatbot, robot, or some version of machine learning.  The architect behind this 20-year evolution is Nvdia. The lion’s share of the spend goes toward NVIDIA’s H100 or L40S GPUs — GPU Server For Deep Learning. … Read more

Insider Buying Week 02-23-24 Is Following Insider Buying Dead as a Strategy?

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Insider buying has been noticeably scarce in this bull leg of a market making all-time highs. The small amount of buying is not performing particularly well either.  You might find this news surprising from a hedge fund manager who has made a living reading these tea leaves for 23 years.  Take last Thursday, February 22nd, the morning after Nvidia reported blockbuster earnings.  I’m tracking about 400 stocks where insiders have purchased at least $200,000 of their company’s stock in the last year. This number has remained constant at 300-400 for the last 23 years. The average returns of those stocks … Read more

Insider Buying Week 02-16-24 Climbing the Wall of Worry

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  Name: Roger M. Singer Position: Director Transaction Date: 2024-02-12 Shares Bought: 500 Average Price Paid: $357.21 Cost: $178,605 Company: Everest Group Ltd. (EG) Name: John A Graf Position: Director Transaction Date: 2024-02-12 Shares Bought: 695 Average Price Paid: $356.75 Cost: $247,941 Company: Everest Group Ltd. (EG) Name: James Allan Williamson Position: EVP, Chief Operating Officer Transaction Date: 2024-02-09 Shares Bought: 700 Average Price Paid: $352.50 Cost: $246,750 Company: Everest Group Ltd. (EG) Name: Mike Karmilowicz Position: EVP, Pres/CEO Insurance Div Transaction Date: 2024-02-09 Shares Bought: 285 Average Price Paid: $352.39 Cost: $100,430 Company: Everest Group Ltd. (EG) Name: Juan … Read more

Another week of near-nonexistent insider buying, accompanied by many stocks making 52-week highs or all-time highs.

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Another week of near-nonexistent insider buying, accompanied by many stocks making 52-week highs or all-time highs.  Beat and raise quarters by Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon pushed the averages higher even with the Fed-dampening interest rate cut expectations and Friday’s blowout job numbers. The market reversed direction Friday and headed higher. Once the rash of normal insider selling after earnings subsides, the market seems higher to me. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, it’s a bull market, especially if you own Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon.   Apparently, you don’t need insider participation for … Read more

Insider Buying Week 01-26-24 Goose Egg None Zappo Gone

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  In the twenty-two years that I have been assiduously noting and observing insider buying, I have never seen a two-week period where there was not one notable insider purchase.  I understand we are in the heart of the earnings season blackout, where insiders are routinely restricted from buying or selling their company’s stock, but this is ridiculous.  There are plenty of insiders who have found a way to unload their company’s stock, but not one single corporate officer or director has made a purchase of $200,000 or more.  I don’t pay much attention to hedge funds and 10% holders … Read more

”s NFL Playoffs.

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The only thing more uninspiring than last week’s insider purchases was this weekend’s NFL Playoffs. You can be an insider, too– by clicking here Name: Timothy C Wentworth Position: Chief Executive Officer Transaction Date: 2024-01-05 Shares Bought: 10,000 Average Price Paid: $24.22 Cost: $242,220 Company: Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (WBA) Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., a Delaware corporation founded in 2014, is a leading integrated healthcare, pharmacy, and retail company with a 170-year history of caring for consumers and patients. Walgreens Boots Alliance is the successor to Walgreens Company, an Illinois firm founded in 1909. Their main executive offices are at … Read more

Insider Buying Week 01-05-24 the Market is Waiting for Something

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The market is waiting for something. If interest rates are going down, the newest popular market obsession, when will they actually go down?  When will the Fed start the interest rate cuts, since everything seems to follow lock step with their interest rate policy?  Sure, rates have dropped some around the periphery.  30-year fixed mortgage rates have come down.  The national average is around 7%, and that’s a far cry from the 8% rates just a month ago, but we are talking drops around the margins. Compare this monthly mortgage rate on a $800,000 home today at $5322.  That same … Read more

Insider Buying Week 12-29-23 Here We go Again with Rampant Speculation

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Here we go again, two insider buys in small biotech names that rocketed 43% and 76% last week.  This didn’t happen in a vacuum. For the last two months or so,  the daily top 50 largest percentage gainers and losers are filled with small-cap and bulletin board names you’ve never heard of, ripping up and down 40%-150% in a shark-like blood-infested feeding frenzy. The list is composed mostly of obscure biotech stocks, pre-revenue or little revenue shells, SPACS, and cryptocurrency names, scams, and fantasies inspired by occasional real biotech transactions, the most notable being the 273% premium Sanofi paid for … Read more

‘s Retreat Continues to Spike the Market

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While some stocks like the Magnificent Seven have had a phenomenal comeback year, many, many companies are depressed in value. For example, many REITs have poor returns, some as a consequence of the sharp rise in interest rates. Agree Realty had a return of -15.34% year-to-date (YTD.) Paying particular attention to significant insider buying is one way to force that discipline of buying cheaply on yourself. When not painting the tape or participating in required corporate ownership requirements, insiders are historically value buyers. This week, we highlight what we think are notable buys. Although we pay attention to selling, we … Read more

Insider Buying Week 12-15-23 Glad to See some Big Names and Big Dollars Returning to the Insider Buying Game

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While some stocks like the Magnificent Seven have had a phenomenal comeback year, many, many companies are depressed in value. We have no shortage of compelling investment ideas, but getting people to invest when values are low is the opposite of human nature. Paying particular attention to significant insider buying is one way to force that discipline on yourself. When not painting the tape or participating in required corporate ownership requirements, insiders are historically value buyers.  This week, we highlight what we think are notable buys. Although we pay attention to selling, we don’t write about this far more nuanced … Read more

Insider Buying Week 12-08-23 Energy Swooned, Some Insiders Stepped Up

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As we go into the final turn of the year, expect some modest profit-taking in the Magnificent Seven. I expect some good opportunities if mortgage rates drop enough for people trapped in their homes to make a move. The purchase this week by National Storage’s Co-Chairman adds some credence to this. The stock has already rallied significantly, but storage should grow if we pick up the American tradition of musical chairs and home swapping. As EV demand wanes and the threat of hydrocarbons being replaced by renewables seems more like fantasy than policy, oil prices fall to levels not seen … Read more

Insider Buying Week 12-01-23 AI will Improve everything but the Tesla pickup truck

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FOMO  (fear of missing out in a year when the S&P is up over 20%) is in full swing. One thing not making the headlines is the market is essentially where it was two years ago, with investors on a roller coaster ride.  AI will improve everything except the Tesla pickup, and gasoline is the cheapest at the pump in years, even as the world seems to be throwing in the towel on preventing climate change. All that ESG and green talk seems to be more expensive than anyone wants to pay for. The magnificent seven took the week off … Read more

Insider Buying Week 11-24-23 Are Investors the Turkey this Thanksgiving?

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Trying to read the tea leaves and glean some information from insider buying patterns is seldom obvious.  Directors are generally required to own a percentage of their board compensation in the company’s equity.  Generally is the right word because this is not a requirement at every company.  Investors viewing this information have to weigh it against past purchases, if any, actual board stock ownership requirements, the relative size of the purchase, and, of course, the recent price history.  Are they buying near the highs or, more typically, purchasing shares at recent lows in price? Insiders tend to be value buyers, … Read more

Insider Buying Week 11-17-23 Few Buyers Lots of Sellers

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   There are a few insider buys this week. As usual, there are a lot of sellers.    Name: Roland D Diggelmann Position: Director Transaction Date: 2023-11-13  Shares Bought: 315 Average Price Paid: $1,026.54 Cost: $323,360 Company: Mettler Toledo International Inc (MTD) Mettler Toledo International Inc. is a global leader in precision instrumentation and services. The company has strong leadership positions in most businesses and worldwide market leadership. The company is known as an innovator, and solutions are vital in key R&D, quality control, and manufacturing processes for customers in various industries, including life sciences, food, and chemicals. The sales … Read more

Insider Buying Week 8-11-23 and the Summer Doldrums

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We are not surprised by the momentum of the oil and gas sector, as it was only a matter of time before its strong fundamentals collided with short sellers and skeptical money managers. We wrote last week about the strong signals from Exxon’s latest quarterly earnings. Activist Exxon board member Jerry Ubben’s purchase of Exxon may have been the biggest act of his illustrious career.  CEO Darren Woods is transforming  Exxon into a juggernaut of earnings  AND the undisputed heavyweight of both hydrocarbons, renewables, and carbon capture. Its stands to dominate all.  According to Woods, there is no reason for … Read more

Insider Buying Week 8-04-23 Hydrocarbons Make the Modern World Modern

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Oil and gas have been the best-performing sector in the market for the last couple of weeks. There is much talk about an oil surplus, and economic weakness in China, the world’s largest petroleum consumer.  Analysts are often too deep in the woods to see the trees.  It is true that Opec et al. Russia fiddle with the supply of oil in an attempt to manipulate the price, but it is equally true that every industrialized economy attempts to influence the price, supply, and consumption of the world’s most important commodity. For example, The U.S. sold off its Strategic Petroleum … Read more

Insider Buying Week 7-28-23 Euphoria has Begun

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Last week pretty much heralded the end of the bear market.  True, long-lasting bull markets start with a plethora of insider buying. That’s obviously not happening.  I’m trying to figure out what that means.  Every significant market correction ended with a near explosion of the insider buying versus selling ratio going vertical. Right now, insiders are cautious. I think we should be too.  That doesn’t mean there won’t be anomalies.     Name: John H Stone Position: President and CEO Transaction Date: 2023-07-27  Shares Bought: 17,500 Average Price Paid: $116.62 Cost: $2,040,892 Company: Allegion plc (ALLE) Allegion plc, a leading … Read more

Insider Buying Week 7-21-23 Is the Bear Market Over?

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The headline in Bloomberg this weekend reads, “The Bear Market Has Nearly Been Erased, Fewer Than 20 Months After It Began.” Bear markets don’t come around often. However, when they do, they tend to cause some catastrophic damage to many investors. That’s why it is important to know how often bear markets occur and how long they will last. The average length of a bear market is 289 days or about 9.6 months.  By that measure, the bear market has already been over for some time. The thing about bear markets is that they tend to be much shorter than … Read more

‘s Different this Time

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Esteemed Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel says we are in a ‘Goldilocks economy’ and the Fed doesn’t need to raise interest rates anymore. You hear this term mentioned when almost all the risks and scary things that you can anticipate in the market are out there in full view, and nothing scares the crap out of you.  Top of my news feed this morning is the idea that we have a Goldilocks market.  I even wrote about it myself in The Insiders Fund’s most recent partner letter. The Goldilocks market is back.  So what is Goldilocks in financial terms?  According to … Read more

Insider Buying Week 7-07-23 Does the Marlboro Man want to break up with Mary Jane?

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The quarter end is normally a dead time for insider buying.  When July 4th falls in the middle of the week, it’s especially boring. There is one thing that stood out on the insider’s front. It’s a story that Reuters broke last Thursday. It was reported that Cronos (CRON)had received numerous buyout offers.  The $2 stock spiked on this news but couldn’t even hold any gains and closed Thursday at the same price or even lower than before the news broke. I find this curious. Reuters is credible. This is not some Reddit post or a firehose of idiots on … Read more

Insider Buying Week 6-30-23-The Nasdaq 100 notched its best-ever first half of a year.

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The Nasdaq 100 notched its best-ever first half of a year.  In a classic reversion to the mean, the worst-performing sector usually becomes one of the best-performing ones.  The Nasdaq 100 will need to rise nearly another 200 points to recoup the amount lost since December of 2021.   I doubt if it could have recouped these losses this fast, though, without the market hype about generative AI. Nasdaq had been on an unsustainable tear since the beginning of the 2020 work-from-home hyper stimulus-infused Pandemic.  I have no idea how long this can last, but I can say with reasonable confidence … Read more

Insider Buying Week 6-23-23- The Fed Plays Whac-A- Mole

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The Stock Market is not supposed to go up for some perverse logic when the Fed tightens. Maybe because wealth is really intrinsically undemocratic in the mind of the elites. They want to kill any chance of their status being threatened. The market has been looking for a sign-  TO SELL. The Fed gave them one last week.  TO PROFIT, TO MORTALLY WOUND THE OPPONENT, A KICK IN THE FACE, EGOMANIAICAL ADVANTAGE. The Federal Reserve Chairman and his cohorts of rate-hiking Whac-a-Molers provided some fuel that ignited the latest bout of interest rate hike anxiety. Ironically the curve is the … Read more

Insider Buying Week 6-16-23

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Stock markets don’t go up every day, or do they? Friday might have been the crack in the armor as the generals sold off a bit. It’s hard to imagine what will bring the market down in the near term other than a bout of profit-taking in the big tech stocks that have run on AI mania. Of course, there are always black swans landing in unanticipated places, but a market being overvalued has never been a reliable case for a sell-off. That’s always a dicey proposition, thinking like that, but the bull is out in the pasture- there’s no … Read more

Insider Buying Week 6-09-23 Investors are Clipping Coupons while the S&P 500 storms higher 12% YTD

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It was a quiet week when it came to insider buying.  Dish Networks had a big percentage move off the bottom as rumors floated that Amazon might be finally making a move with the cellular bandwidth that Dish has spent so many billions of dollars accumulating.  On Friday, it gave back 12.5%.  Nothing deters  Director DeFranco as he bought $ 1.8 million more of Dish. There might actually be a plan for their madness, and it may have nothing at all to do with Amazon.  Perhaps there is a SpaceX rescue coming?  At this point, Dish stock is like an … Read more

Insider Buying Week 6-02-23 Animal Spirits Return

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Animal spirits returned in force last week. The average insider returned 7.96% and a median return of 6.61%. The S&P 500 scorched 3.97%. The safe money crowd collecting their guaranteed 4%-5% is near the half-year point. They’ve earned a little less than their guaranteed 2%. That’s 2% for the year to date when the market just turned in twice that for a week. Fear of missing out, FOMO, is a dangerous thing.  One way to avoid that investment mistake is to pay attention to what insiders are doing. Normally they don’t chase their stocks in a FOMO moment. They are … Read more

Insider Buying Week 5-26-23

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It’s all AI, Chat GPT, large langauge models, and generative image models. Nvidia’s blowout quarter and guidance sent the market into a bull run seizure moment.  Meanwhile, you hear more and more stories about fake information generated by this “breakthrough AI,” including the latest example on Twitter where an attorney was reprimanded by a judge for his brief, which included fake prior cases entirely fabricated by AI. We can’t ignore the promise, but we certainly shouldn’t be blindsided by the hype. Tread carefully here. At the Insiders Fund, we try to filter out the noise. Here’s what real insiders are … Read more

Insider Buying Week 5-19-23 If you want to play a game of chicken- Tyson Insiders are Buying

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No one really believes the U.S. will default on the debt.  The least of which are these insiders stepping up to buy their company’s stock last week.  If we’re talking a game of chicken, I say look at what Tyson Foods insiders are doing.  Five insiders took advantage of the steep share price drop on Q1 earnings disappointment.  Albemarle insiders continue to bet on the lithium economy. If you’re inclined to bet on default, take a look at the PRA Group’s earnings disaster and the new CEO purchase.  Debt collection could be a hot new growth market. You can be … Read more

Insider Buying Week 5-12-23 Prelude to Something but What?

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Insiders are coming out in force to buy regional and community banks.  Normally significant insider buys are met with a predictable market response, a positive bounce between 3%-5%. This is not happening.  There is no urgency, as the stocks, for the most part, are lower than when the “informed investor” purchased the shares.  I like to believe that no one knows more about the business than the people running it, but banks may be a glaring exception to my dogma.  First of all, banks’ balance sheets are complicated and notoriously obtuse.   2008 should serve as an indelible reminder of that. … Read more

Insider Buying Week 5-5-23 Banking Blood Bath is it time to Buy?

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Insiders came out to play last week. It was not pretty, but insiders are bottom fishers, as a rule. They buy in force when prices are down when they perceive a bottom.  Regional bank insiders were all over the field scooping up prices that haven’t been seen since the Pandemic lows. Unfortunately, most of it was in regional bank stocks. Bank stocks are notoriously difficult to understand. First of all, they are highly leveraged, between 5-10% Tier 1 capital ratios which is the ratio of a bank’s core tier 1 capital—its equity capital and disclosed reserves—to its total risk-weighted assets.  Usually, that … Read more

Banks rising from the Dead?- not so hot for the Greens Insider Buying Week 4-28-23

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Insiders continue to buy regional and community banks. In most likely a classic case of the baby being thrown out with the bathwater, the KRE, regional bank ETF, showed signs of bottoming but Microsoft and Meta stole the limelight with better-than-expected quarterly earnings. It hasn’t been a good week for the Greens. First, the Chilean government decides they are going to nationalize the country’s lithium reserves. Chile is the world’s second-largest producer of metal essential in electric vehicle batteries. Enphase, the leading inverter and one of the leading battery suppliers to the solar panel industry, swooned 15% on lower-than-expected earnings … Read more