TCDA

‘m Giving Robert Coury another Change to F*ck Me, Insider Trading Week Ending 12-18-20

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For trade details click on this link to the trades   PROGENITY Inc up 38.05%  COO Silvestry bought 58,081 shares of PROG at $4.58.  Progenity announced on December 17th  that it is expanding the availability of COVID-19 RT-PCR testing across the United States to support the rising demand for testing. Testing is performed using the Thermo Fisher Applied Biosystems TaqPath COVID-19 Combo Kit, under Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA. Although the stock rocketed on this news combined with insider buying, it’s been a rough haul for shareholders.  Give this one a little time to pullback. PROG recently did a … Read more

”s Who Did

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For the trade details click on this link to the trades   We all know by now or should that this is a very overextended and disconnected from reality market. Extraordinary liquidity and compassionate finance largess from the Federal Reserve keeps the rally alive. Value is hard to come by and insiders are telling you as much.  There will always be something of value to buy but the companies insiders are still buying into are increasingly obscure.           Allied Esports Entertainment up 26.17% was the standout performance-wise for the week.  Knighted Pastures LLC bought 552,862 shares … Read more

Insider Buying Picks Up- Week Ending 5-15-20

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Insider buying picked up this week across several depressed sectors like insurance,  small regional banks,  gaming, furniture, REITS, building products, restaurants and retailers, automotive and motorcycle and utility stocks. The buy of the week is property and casualty California auto insurer, Mercury General MCY.  Chairman of the Board George Joseph continued accumulating stock with $15 million of stock purchases at an average price of $35.95. MCY is down from it’s high this year of $52.  MCY yields 6.65%. People are driving less and insurance claim losses are down  as a result of that. Offsetting this, reinvestment rates on bond portfolios … Read more

Notable Insider Buying Week Ending Nov. 22, 2019

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Please read the last paragraph before you invest.   Following insiders, although childishly simple and obvious of an idea, is fraught with danger.  You can lose money.  There are a lot of nuances to interpreting. For example, the significance of a billionaire buying $300,000 worth of stock is like the average person tippling the valet $5. It doesn’t mean much.  We try to grab the essence of an interesting buy with as few words as possible. Why does Aramark CEO buy $1.49 million of stock at $42.68? Perhaps he is jealous of seeing his Chairman of the Board make $1,000,000, 30% … Read more

”s

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Grounding of Boeing’s MAX plane, labor troubles, and recession fears have haunted shares of American Airlines this year. But some investors are betting that the worst is over and the shares could climb higher in 2020. Source: Shares of American Airlines Could Be Ready for Takeoff After a Very Bad Year – Barron’s American Airlines has been one of our core holdings most of the year.  We were up a significant amount but watched all of our profits disintegrate and turn to losses.   We traded Delta and United very profitably but American just seemed too cheap to trade. We were … Read more

Insiders Put the Petal to the Metal as Animal Spirits Show Signs of Life

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Animal spirits are picking up.  This is the most buying we’ve seen since the market sell-off last December. One thing for sure, Insiders buy stocks when they think they are cheap.  Highlights are: Several insiders bought GE stock immediately prior to and immediately after Harry Markapolis’s interview on CNBC where he alleged fraud. Axogen Chairman bought $1 million worth of stock after the company she leads plunged 30% on weaker earnings forecast Outdoor billboard leader, Clear Channel newly appointed Chairman bought $913k at $2.28 per share.  CCO is loaded with debt. Three CIT insiders took advantage of low prices to … Read more

Notable Insider Buys and Sales Week Ending 4-19-19

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It was a dull week for insider trading, duller even than the miserly week before.  Last week would make you think it was a crime to buy your own company’s stock.   Of course, we are in the throes of the 1st quarter earnings blackout, but insiders still find ways to unload their holdings though. There were a couple of noteworthy buys.

Buys

JPM JPMorgan Chase & Co (Mkt Cap: $338.9B) – Director Mellody Hobson Mellody steps up buying JPM after the stock bounced 5% on 1st quarter earnings surprise, spending $2.2M to purchase 19,700 at $111.30. This increased her holdings by 31.2%.  That might have meant something but six insiders also sold $28.1 million worth.

LAWS Lawson Products (Mkt Cap: $274.0M) Chairman of the Board, John King must have liked what he saw as he bought $1.2M worth of stock after the Company reported a healthy leap in earnings. Lawson Products(LAWS), a product supplier to the maintenance, repair, and operations market, reported Q1 adjusted earnings of $0.48 per share, up from $0.25 in the same period a year ago and topping the estimate of $0.29 from analysts polled by Capital IQ.

Total revenue of $91.3 million was up from $84.4 million in the same period ending in March a year ago and topped the Street projection of $89.8 million.

Sales
BBY Best Buy  Perhaps things aren’t as sunny as we think at Best Buy. Two insiders sold $19.9 million worth of stock in outright sales, including Chairman Joly’s sale of 171,711 shares at $73.68.

Not much of interest here either. Insiders continue to unload stock using the Rule 10b5-1 loophole that allows insiders to sell stock right through any imposed earnings blackout period. It’s hard to read anything much into these sales other than the fact, that I would rather see insiders buying than selling their stock. The timing of these transactions shed little light on short term price movements, though.

In this report, we examined open market purchases from employees and directors.  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, $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. 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. If you would like to hear more about how you can get involved with the Insiders Fund, please schedule some time on my calendar

 

Notable Insider Buys and Sales Week Ending 4-12-19

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It was a dull week for insider trading, duller even than the dull week before.  Last week would make you think it was a crime to buy your own company’s stock.   Of course, we are in the throes of the 1st quarter earnings blackout, but insiders still find ways to unload their holdings though.

Buys

ABEO Abeo Therapeutics Two directors bought stock in this biotech.  One was a first time purchase for a sizeable amount. We normally don’t think much of new directors buys as this is pretty much a riskless transaction as they will get paid in compensation as much as they might be expected to buy.  Director Buono bought 70,000 shares at $7.80 per share and that’s worth noticing.
Abeona Therapeutics announced that the FDA has granted fast track designation to ABO-101, the company’s novel one-time gene therapy for Sanfilippo syndrome type B, or MPS IIIB. ABO-101 is designed to deliver a functional copy of the NAGLU gene to the central nervous system and peripheral tissues. Abeona is enrolling eligible patients with MPS IIIB at sites in the U.S. and Spain and expects to activate additional sites globally this year to accelerate enrollment.
But the story gets thicker and particularly thornier;
wrote in January 2017 that ABEO Director Mark Ahn appears to have settled an SEC investigation for his involvement in an illegal stock promotion when he served as the CEO of Galena Pharmaceuticals (GALE).

Before being sued, Ahn allegedly promoted GALE with illegal stock promotion campaigns costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, then dumped millions of dollars of his stock, enriching himself.

This is not surprising to us as ABEO’s board is filled with stock promoters, including Chairman Steven Rouhandeh, who has a long and similar history of promotion and self-enrichment.

Two sell-side “analysts” defending ABEO were involved in numerous China fraud wipeouts while at Rodman & Renshaw.

It doesn’t appear that this director is working there any longer and to the company’s credit, new director Buono comes with good credentials but most importantly he is buying $546,000 dollars worth of good credit. Among Mr. Buono’s many accomplishments was bringing AAA public in November 2015, on the NASDAQ exchange. The company traded under the ticker symbol AAAP, until it was acquired by Novartis in January 2018.

LNDC Landec Director Obus doubled down on his currently losing hand by purchasing 60,000 shares at $10.33.  Landec does a lot of things as taken from its 10k: Landec Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, designs, develops, manufactures, and sells differentiated health and wellness products for food and biomaterials markets. It operates through two segments, Packaged Fresh Vegetables and Biomaterials.  Revenue and Debt have risen while profits have shrunk, not a pretty picture.
TCDA Tricinda Director Parker bought 20,000 shares at $36. Tricida, Inc., a pharmaceutical company, focuses on the development and commercialization of its drug candidate, TRC101, a non-absorbed, orally-administered polymer designed as a potential treatment for metabolic acidosis in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). It has completed a Phase 3, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of TRC101 in patients with CKD and metabolic acidosis.
SYRS Pharmaceuticals Director Srinivas increased his holdings by 50% purchasing 533,332 shares at $7.50 spending $4 million dollars in an underwritten offering. Piper Jaffray was one of the underwriters and their analyst Edward Tenthoff lowered his price target for Syros Pharmaceuticals to $24 from $28 to account for dilution of the company’s recent $70M capital raise. The analyst, however, reiterates an Overweight rating on the name. Syros is developing potentially best-in-class CDK7 inhibitors, Tenthoff tells investors in a research note. He points out that data from the expansion cohorts in ovarian cancer are expected in Q4.
Sales

Not much of interest here either. Insiders continue to unload stock using the Rule 10b5-1 loophole that allows insiders to sell stock right through any imposed earnings blackout period. It’s hard to read anything much into these sales other than the fact, that I would rather see insiders buying than selling their stock. The timing of these transactions shed little light on short term price movements, though.

In this report, we examined open market purchases from employees and directors.  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, $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. 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. If you would like to hear more about how you can get involved with the Insiders Fund, please schedule some time on my calendar