Top insider trades (Fri, Jan 30)

Connor’s Commentary

There were 81 new insider trades filed.

No new insider trades were flagged as High Signal, but I shared a couple of notes on some moderately interesting trades with CEO Watcher Premium subs in the Trade Notes section.

As a reminder, if you upgrade to CEO Watcher Premium (link) and find that it isn’t for you, I’ll give you a refund.

• Director at Worthington Steel (WS) bought $274k of the stock (largest purchase ever, out of 4). This is her first time ever buying WS, and her previous purchases were 15 years ago.

• A director at NBT Bancorp (NBTB) bought $976k of the stock. This is their 2nd largest purchase ever (out of 4) and their 3rd purchase in the last 4 months.

• CEO at Northrim Bancorp (NRIM) bought $34k. Small purchase, but it was their first purchase ever, and it comes after they got smoked on earnings.

• Co-Chairman at Schwab (SCHW) was being a little sneaky. They exercised and sold $18.6M worth of options that expire in March, but then threw in another $2.7M of common stock to sell in that transaction as well.

• The Chief Accounting Officer at CSX Corporation (CSX) sold $2.5M of the stock (3rd largest sale, out of 4). This was their first sale in two years.

• The insider selling at Argan (AGX) continues after its 170% run-up in the last year

• Director at Teledyne (TDY) sells $1.5M of the stock (largest sale ever, out of 26). The stock is up 20% in the last month.

• The CFO at Corning (GLW) exercised and sold another $2.2M of options. These options vested 3 years ago and don't expire for another 4 years.

• and more…

Commentary

It’s Friday, so let’s do an update on the CEO Watcher data.

The CEO Watcher Portfolio* had its first losing week of the year and got whooped by the S&P.

*The CEO Watcher Portfolio is a standalone portfolio I started with ~$10k to buy equally-weighted positions in High Signal Stocks so we can track the performance in a real-money portfolio. I also hold much larger positions in many of the High Signal Stocks in my personal portfolio.

On the bright side, we are still crushing the S&P since inception on November 1st.

And still winning YTD.

Last week, we peaked at 20 points of outperformance v the S&P in just 2.5 months. Obviously, that couldn’t continue forever, so a pullback was expected (and the pullback may not be over).

The decline comes from a few of our more speculative positions having big down weeks, led by Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA), which was somehow down 10% in a week where the FDA removed its clinical trial hold. The news shot the stock up 20%, and yet, it not only gave back the entire 20% but also lost another 10% on top of that.

However, we still managed to make 44% in just three weeks on that trade, so I guess we shouldn’t be complaining. I wrote about this trade yesterday, if you missed it (link).

We also got stopped out of a handful of other positions, which CEO Watcher Premium subscribers can see in the Data Dump section of this email.

Hopefully, we see some good post-earnings dip buys come in over the next few weeks that we can add to the portfolio.

As a reminder, if you upgrade to CEO Watcher Premium (link) and find that it isn’t for you, I’ll give you a refund.

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The High Signal Watchlist also lost a little bit of ground to the S&P, driven by the same reasons as the CEO Watcher Portfolio above, and the one critical mineral play on the list is down 20% this week (and fell from being up 150% a couple of weeks ago to just +20% now).

However, the High Signal List continues to outperform the S&P by a wide margin.

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Insider sentiment continues to fade slightly, but is still well above the Bullish threshold.

The S&P also continues to weaken a little bit, with this week’s high just barely edging out the previous high from January 12th.

Definitely a weaker week across the board, but still nothing to get too worried about yet (in my opinion).

Have a great weekend!

keep scrolling. top trades + all of the charts and data below

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