Insider Selling

Facebook shares took another hellacious dive last week when the lock-up period for insider selling ended on Thursday. Gluttonously coveted by investors in the months leading up to the IPO, the stock has become a pariah after falling 50% from its $38 offering price in May. Was it jinxed from the start, as some have suggested? It is indeed true that technical gremlins on Nasdaq plagued the order book the day Facebook went public. And although some sore losers have sued to get their money back (if not their hands, belatedly, on fire-sale shares) the exchange glitches seemed to us like business as usual. Facebook’s real problem is that it is just another Internet fad that will probably never earn a profit commensurate with the $100 billion valuation it was given by IPO buyers.

Instead of a "botched" event, the Facebook IPO is actually a total success by Wall Street standard, since concerted effort appeared to have been made  to ensure an "acceptable" return for the insiders.

It's hard being a bear, except this week wasn't so bad.

We have discussed the money-on-the-sidelines fallacy a few times recently in the context of the circular money-flows (clear misunderstanding of the idea of a buyer and a seller) as well as mutual fund cash levels, retail sentiment, demographic shifts, and insider transactions. There is mounting evidence, as Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson notes, that 'make no mistake...institutional investors are all-in' as the rolling beta of mutual funds relative to the S&P 500 tops 1.10x at multi-year highs, institutional investors are most exposed to high beta sectors since MS data began, and long/shorts funds are near their most levered long since MS records began. Combine this with the massive surge in Insider Selling transactions in the last few weeks (apropos Charles Biderman's comments on the rally's support by Insider buying til now) and perhaps bearish retail sentiment will lead this market down as we hope that finally 'money-on-the-sidelines' fades from the parlance of all but the most aged and incompetent of market prognosticators.

It appears we are, as a nation of desperately consuming investors, becoming increasingly cognitively dissonant. Charles Biderman, of TrimTabs, leaves the ominous clouds of the Bay Area for New York City and addresses our seemingly Pavlovian response for the third year in a row to a rising stock market (flooded with portfolio-rebalancing duration-destroying Central Bank money) as evidence that the real economy must be doing great. Of course, relying on tried and true facts such as real job growth and real wage growth and understanding the seasonally-abused-adjusted housing data realities, Biderman notes that the only money driving stocks up is corporate buybacks dominating selling pressure. While modestly bullish on these flows, he is growing more anxious. He sees insider selling surging (from 5:1 January to 14:1 February to 35:1 in March), there has been no new 'cash-takeovers' announced this month compared to $15bn per month last year, and the IPO pipeline is ramping up fast (supply will dominate demand) as the end of Operation Twist approaches removing yet another prop to the perceived reality of stocks.

Though the market keeps raging to the upside, I keep seeing bearish signs in market sentiment – the VIX is hitting multi-year lows, 

I ask myself everyday: if I am buyer today will I be able to get out of this market safely and without a parachute?

As long as the bulls continue to believe, the market should continue to push higher, but there will be limit.

This is kinda like if one is a 2nd year corp fin analyst, and just as the 300 tab excel model showing the massive synergies from the pitched M&A deal is supposed to be presented to the client, the whole thing #Refs out... And hasn't been saved for days. According to Bloomberg, in the last week the ratio of insider selling to buying on the S&P was 3,700x.... 3,700x!!!!!

Nothing new in the latest S&P 500 insider selling (and occasional buying). There were 2 (count them: two) purchases of stock by corporate insiders, of which one, which accounted for 97% of all purchases, came from Berkshire Hathaway. As usual selling dominated, with a ratio of 41 in notional sales to buys. And while we have been exposing this relentless dumping by insiders for years now, TrimTabs has added some voice to these ongoing warnings in which insiders sell their holdings to far less knowledgeable investors who are happy to burn "other people's money." Specifically, TrimTabs looks at the corporate share repurhcase-to-insider stock buying ratio, and gets some shocking results, namely that companies that have enacted $168 billion in corporate buybacks in 2011 have matched this with just $10 million in insider buying, a 16,800-to-1 ratio.

The good news: this week's insider sales to buys were half of last week's 147x. The bad news: this week's insider selling to buying came at 69.3x. As a reminder, a baseline bearish indication occurs whenever the insider selling surpasses 30x. That it has surpassed that threshold for virtually every week in the past two years seems to continue to be lost on investors. There were 8 insider purchases of S&P 500 stocks for $3.4 million, the bulk of which was in Marshall & Ilsley stock for $1.7 million, while the sales were focused on Heinz, Iron Mountain, Agilent, Broadcom and NetApp, where insiders dumped a total of $86 million.

Following last week's outlier of only 60x more insider selling than buying, the latest Bloomberg S&P500 insider selling (and occasional) buying update shows that corporate insiders are once again reverting to the mean of dumping as much of everything as they can with both hands. The last week saw nearly 150x more insider selling to buying, with just $2.3 million in purchases (nearly half of which was accounted for by the $1MM purchase in Medtronic), offset by $333 million in selling. The biggest sales were Hershey, Autozone, Abercrombie and Fitch, Agilent and Chipotle, better known as some of the biggest bubbles in the current market.

Little can be added to the ongoing discussion of insider selling (and occasionally, buying): while last week the ratio of selling to buying was over 350x, Bloomberg reports that the just ended week saw the ratio drop to the still massive 60x, primarily courtesy of the Titanium Metals Buyer appearing on the scene again, whose $7.6 million purchase accounted for 61% of total purchases of $12.4 million, spread among 14 transactions. The selling, meanwhile, barely abated, and while it was not last week's nearly record $1 billion, insiders did sell just about $750 million worth of stock in 130 transactions. The top 5 sales were in Microsoft, where $377 million was sold, either before or after the company's earnings. MSFT was followed by 3M, Pepsi, Estee Lauder and Praxair. All in all, total selling-to-buying was roughly 2 times the threshold of the bearish barrier, which however has been the case for the bulk of the past two years.

It has been a while since we refreshed the relentless insider selling rush. So it was good to see there were no surprises in the latest Bloomberg reported S&P 500 insider selling and buying. In the week ended May 6, there was $1.2 million worth of purchases, primarily in PBCT and NDAQ (some insider seems to think there is a possible upside catalyst here, ahem NYSE-deal), with a total of 10 insider purchases in the week. This was offset with a meager 165 insider sales, totalling $650 million, for a selling-to-buying ratio of 565x. The biggest selling occurred in GOOG, Praxair, Waters Corp, Campbell and Equity Residential. And while there are those who claim it is perfectly normal for insiders to cash out promptly without regard for the message sent to other shareholders, even Barrons' noticed the massive spike in selling in recent weeks, noting that any selling to buying ratio over 20 is bearish based on its limited universe of stocks. So, what about 565?

Corporate insider appear to have moderate their relentless dumping of stock. After selling around have a billion in stock each week, corporate executives and officers, sold only $185 million worth of S&P 500 stock in the week ended last Friday per Bloomberg. The biggest selling was in the stock of HJ Heinz ($39 million), Pall ($20 million), and First Solar, Cisco and Priceline in 3rd, 4th and 5th positions (not all that surprisingly). As for buying, it continues to be lethagic and is rescued each week by the 10b-5 buying in Titanium Metals stock which accounted for 70% of last week's 10 million in purchases (one of the 8 transactions that comprised insider buying). Look for tomorrow's ICI number to see if domestic outflows have extended to a 4th consecutive week now that retail has once again lost its appetite for top ticking the market.