🟨🤑 300% Returns with a 100% Success Rate!

Hello all!

We have 5 more pretty great insider trades from this week. I’m also now including a section at the top of these emails to explain how CEOWatcher works and mention some of the other projects we are working on! Hopefully, this gives you a little insight into how CEOWatcher works, how we calculate returns and win rates, and some other projects you might like!

How CEOWatcher Works

(The top trades of the week are below this section)

Tons of websites/newsletters track insider trades, but CEOWatcher is the only one that calculates the historic returns for those insiders so that you can know which insiders tend to buy before the stock price pops. We are currently tracking over 3000 insiders every single day (and always adding more).

We can do this because of our main project, Yellowbrick Investing, which is a social stocks platform where you can connect your brokerage, find other top investors, see their portfolio and returns, and get notified when they make a new trade (make sure to sign up for that if interested). We spend thousands of dollars per month on stock data APIs and spent a year building out our internal Stock Data Service that lets us easily calculate the returns for insiders.

Terminology

Returns - The weighted average return over a given time frame

• Overall Returns - The weighted average return for all of the insider’s trades from the day they made the trade until the day this email is sent

  • Calculate the price when the email is sent / price the insider paid to get the overall return for each trade and then take the weighted average of all of those returns

• 1-Year Returns - The weighted average return for all of the insider’s trades from the day they made the trade until one year later (note: a trade needs to be at least one year old to have this calculation)

  • Calculate the price one year after the purchase / price the insider paid to get the 1-year return for each trade and then take the weighted average of all of those returns

• 90-Day Returns - The weighted average return for all of the insider’s trades from the day they made the trade until 90 days later (note: a trade needs to be at least 90 days old to have this calculation)

  • Calculate the price 90 days after the purchase / price the insider paid to get the 90-day return for each trade and then take the weighted average of all of those returns

Win Rate - The percentage of trades that are profitable for the given time frame (overall, 1-year, 90-days).

Other Yellowbrick Products

Yellowbrick - Social stocks platform to follow other top investors, see their holdings and returns, and get notified when they make a trade

CEO Leaderboard - The top 100 CEOs based on their 1-Year Returns

Politician Leaderboard (coming soon) - The top 100 politicians based on their 1-Year Returns

Stock Alerts (coming soon) - Get notified when a stock reaches your target price

The CEO Trades

Mark Hildebrandt - Director at (link)

This purchase marks Mark’s (nailed it) 16th purchase of HEI. It is also his largest purchase ever ($217,535) and comes after a big stock price drop (-40% in 6 months). He has purchased stock every year since 2011, but he skipped 2022 (probably because he knew the stock was not going to do well).

Extra: 8 other directors/executives at HEI also purchased stock simultaneously, and they all have similar returns and win rates as Mark.

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: 300% average returns with a 100% win rate (16/16 trades were profitable)

1-year: 40% returns one year after purchasing with a 93% win rate (14/15 trades)

90-day: 23% returns with a 93% win rate (14/15 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $217,535

Purchase Price: $157.07

Current Price: $163.65 (+4%)

Rating

Rating: 9/10

Why: The only minor knock is that the stock is already up 4% since his purchase, but everything else looks great. The win rate and returns are fantastic, we have a good amount of history (15 previous trades), the stock price is low (-40% in 6 months), and it’s his largest purchase ever.

Leighton Thomson - CEO at AKAM -0.24%↓ (link)

Last week, we found that Leighton had kicked off a 10b5-1 plan to start buying up stocks. Go check out last week’s note for more info (link), but the gist is that he has twice before gone on a buying spree (in 2016 and 2017) and did quite well with those (56% and 67% overall returns respectively).

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: 106% average returns with a 97% win rate (32/33 trades were profitable)

1-year: 28% returns one year after purchasing with a 63% win rate (15/24 trades)

90-day: 12% returns with a 63% win rate (15/24 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $125,335

Purchase Price: $86.05

Current Price: $88.05 (+2%)

Rating

Rating: 7/10

Why: Overall, a pretty strong rating due to a large amount of history (33 trades), a nearly perfect overall win rate (32/33), and solid returns. The only downside here is that his 90-day and 1-year win rates aren’t amazing, but this still could be a solid long-term play.

Roxanne Austin - Director at (link)

Roxanne doesn’t have a ton of history, but this was one of the largest insider purchases of the last week, her 2nd largest purchase ever (only ~8% lower than her largest purchase ever), and a well-known company.

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: 66% average returns with an 83% win rate (5/6 trades were profitable)

1-year: 30% returns one year after purchasing with a 100% win rate (4/4 trades)

90-day: 1% returns with a 50% win rate (2/4 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $3,366,700

Purchase Price: $96.19

Current Price: $97.92 (+2%)

Rating

Rating: 6/10

Why: The two knocks on her are her limited history (only 6 trades) and her lackluster 90-day returns. However, you don’t often see big, well-known companies like this come across our scanner, so that makes it particularly compelling. Plus, in her limited history, she has pretty great long-term returns and with this stock being down ~65% over the last year or so, this may be a good long-term play with a lower risk profile than most of the stocks we find.

BVF Partners - Director at (link)

This is obviously not a person, but a fund instead that sits on the board of a handful of public companies. They have made 142 purchases overall and 22 purchases of XOMA. They used to buy XOMA stock very regularly between 2018 and 2020 (with great success), but have only made 3 purchases since 2020. They bought $1.4M of XOMA in September of 2022 and then just bought up $421k on January 9th.

Returns and Win Rate

For XOMA only:

Overall: 12% average returns with a 91% win rate (20/22 trades were profitable)

1-year: 66% returns one year after purchasing with a 94% win rate (18/19 trades)

90-day: 18% returns with a 95% win rate (20/21 trades)

For all purchases:

Overall: 78% average returns with a 60% win rate (86/142 trades were profitable)

1-year: 21% returns one year after purchasing with a 64% win rate (79/123 trades)

90-day: 18% returns with a 62% win rate (86/139 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $420,737

Purchase Price: $18.91

Current Price: $22.70 (+20%)

Rating

Rating: 4/10

Why: The pros of this trade are that we have a ton of history (142 total trades), their success rate is fairly good (but not great) on their overall trades, and we have a good amount of history on just their purchases of XOMA (22 trades) with very promising results (91%+ hit rates with 1-year returns over 65%). The major downside is that the stock is already up 20% from the purchase price. This is worth keeping an eye on if the price drops back again closer to their purchase price, but for right now the risk/reward isn’t the most favorable (in my opinion).

Bandera Partners - Director at (link)

We’ve got another fund this week. They don’t have the highest hit rate overall but have done a great job with their JYNT purchases and this is their 3rd largest purchase of the stock (out of 16).

Returns and Win Rate

For JYNT only:

Overall: 27% average returns with a 100% win rate (16/16 trades were profitable)

1-year: 276% returns one year after purchasing with a 100% win rate (4/4 trades)

90-day: 17% returns with a 49% win rate (8/13 trades)

For all purchases:

Overall: 3% average returns with a 32% (😬) win rate (25/76 trades were profitable)

1-year: 63% returns one year after purchasing with a 63% win rate (40/64 trades)

90-day: 7% returns with a 49% win rate (36/73 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $1,768,688

Purchase Price: $13.60

Current Price: $18.23 (+34%)

Rating

Rating: 3/10

Why: People must pay more attention when funds buy up stock compared to when executives do because both funds this week had their stock pop immediately after filing the purchase. The major downsides here are that the stock has already popped 34% and their overall record is pretty shabby. However, the stock is still down 85% since late 2021 and this fund has a great track record when buying JYNT. This is another one worth keeping an eye on if the stock price falls closer to the purchase price or if they buy up more stock at this higher price in the near future.

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Connor V.