Insider Selling

According to Bloomberg, for the week ended September 10, corporate insiders bought $0.5MM in shares in 4 different companies. This was offset by sales of $332MM in 72 different companies, a ratio of 651 of sellers to buyers. At least companies are making their opinions known on the viability of the latest bear market rally. The suckers? All those who are still not involved in the rigged casino but actually buying.

After last week's outlier data, in which 3 buyers pushed the balance for the first time in over a year to a positive buyer/seller ratio, this week we are back to the new normal: a/k/a selling deluge. $488 million in shares was sold in the past week in 192 documents transactions, while just $8 million was bought in 38 deals. Notable dispositions included Bill Gates selling $85 million worth of MSFT, Roger Pensky dumping over $100 million, and Juniper Chairman Scott Kriens selling $12.5 million worth of JNPR stock. Also, after announcing a major trimming in his GOOG portfolio, Sergey Brin sold some "pocketchange" worth of Google stock worth $7.6 million. Source: FinViz

Insider selling for the prior week declined from $418 million to just $99 million, as buying accelerated from $18 million to $41 million. The bulk of the purchases, or $38 million, occurred in two names: Cedar Fair and Texas Instruments. In the first, Q Funding, presumably an entity with a big fascination by T.S. Eliot, as its funding vehicles are called J Alfred Onshore and Prufrock Onshore, bought $13.5 million worth of FUN shares. This may mark the first time in history when a hedge fund manager is actually edumacated and doesn't name their funds for a cloud formation, or a Greek letter. The other big buyer was Longleaf Partners which bought about $25 million of Texas Instruments. In the selling category, investors in Broadwind Energy may consider dumping, as both the CEO and Jeff Gendell offloaded about $40 million worth of stock on the 21st.

What is there to say about the endless barrage of insider sales that hasn't been said for 9 straight months before. Insiders are selling into the neverending rally, as domestic mutual funds have no equity inflows, yet stocks somehow miraculously keep rising, providing yet more attractive exit price points for directors and insiders. In the past week insiders bought $18 million worth of stock and sold $419 million. There is no way to spin this data. There were no notable buyers, while Nelson Peltz was vacating HNZ shares with a vengeance, selling $30 million worth of the canned food maker. Ralph Lauren also apparently wasn't too hot on Polo's Spring/Summer collection.

2010 has started off with a bang. Insiders purchased $4.5 million worth of stock (and yes, this does not include the end year transaction by such individuals as Nelson Peltz who acquired nearly 10 million shares of Legg Mason on the last day of 2009), in the period from January 4. It should, however, comes as no surprise that in the same period selling did not moderate, and insiders offloaded $281 million in shares (yes, this accounts for double counting between various corporate entities). Net result: an insider selling to buying of 62x to kick off 2010. And still the quants are chasing momentum ever higher. There is no way this will end in anything but tears.

While certainly a "slight" improvement from last week's ratio of 82 sales for every buy (in dollar value), this week we see a reversion back to the recent mean of about 30x, or a 32.4x ratio of insider selling to buying, to be specific. In the last week insiders sold $332.7 million worth of stock and bought $10.2 million. The recession continues being over.

It seems like yesterday that Bob Toll was propounding the benefits of stimulus packages for housing and the ever improving status of new home sales (solidly grounded in the same sands as Dubai is now sinking into). Yet while we at Zero Hedge have enjoyed taking repeated stabs at Mr. Toll's seemingly endless selling of his own stock, we have not learned our lesson. Which is why we present his insider transaction in a new and original way, courtesy of Bloomberg. As the image indicates, Mr. Toll's money is roughly 180 degrees from where his mouth is.

You would think that insiders would finally change their tune after almost a year of straight line gains in the market. Think again. The most recent insider trading data from finviz indicates that insider sellling outpaces buying by a ratio of 82! In the most recent data set, $11.6 million in stock was purchased by insiders, while a whopping $957 million was sold. And somehow pundits are still spinning this mass orchestrated sell into the bid by those in the know as a bull market.

The prior week's insider transaction indicated a significant "moderation" in insider selling, with insiders selling only 27.7x more than they bought, at $106.1 million vs $3.8 in buys versus sells, respectively. Obviosuly insiders are catching wind that things are now truly back to normal.

Insider selling outpaced buying by "only" a factor of 41x (data from FinViz). The data was adjusted to exclude the $37 million purchased by Elevation Partners as part of the Palm follow on, as that transaction was likely premarketed and was designed to generate deal interest by the underwriter Goldman Sachs. Pro Forma for this purchase, there was $2.1 million in 24 insider buys versus $84.4 million in 139 insider sells. While sellers are still outpacing buyers by a material margin, the volume on both side of the equation is dropping dramatically (well, mostly the sellers). At some point once the selling is exhausted, a contrarian could say that the motivation to keep the market propped up could very easily disappear.

Not sure if there is a glitch in FinViz' data, but the most recent data indicates a ratio of 95x of insider selling $35 million to insiders buy of a whopping $367,720. If anyone has more definitive data, please advise, however a ratio of nearly 100x sellers to buyers is pretty conclusive of who is selling to the robots, as the bids are gunned ever higher.

TrimTabs TrimTabs earlier disclosed that the ratio of insider selling to buying had averaged about 31x for August, with $6.3 billion of insider sales matched by only $210 million on insider buys. Insiders apparently decided to exit August with a bang, with the last week of insider transactions doubling the sell-to-buy ratio to 61.8x! Over half a billion in stock was sold, while a whopping $8 million was purchased.

If there is any doubt as to which way insiders were leaning during this "market rally," this data should seal that particular coffin.

It seems one can never get enough of Charles Biderman. Also, Charles, once again, destroys the money on the sidelines fallacy. That being said, the cigar dude (apparently Murdoch has a pretty loose indoor smoking policy) should probably spar with WalStreetPro 2 instead of being on Fox Biz equivalent of the decabox, even though the man is spot on in his observations.

"Insider selling is 30x insider buying, while corporate stock buybacks are non-existent. Companies are saying they don't want to touch their own stocks."

"I don't know where the money is coming from to keep the markets from not plunging."

One can offer some suggestions.