Top insider trades (Mon, Dec 1)

Connor’s Commentary

It was a slow filing day due to the holiday, so there were only 85 new insider trades filed. Note: I added trade notes from last week to the Trade Notes section that I couldn’t get to in time for Friday’s email.

• A director at DoorDash (DASH) bought $100M of the stock. His first purchase since 2022 (and his largest)

• Insiders at FS Specialty Lending Fund (FSSL) continue to buy the stock

• The Principal Accounting Officer at Enovis (ENOV) bought the stock for the first time. The stock is down 36% in the last year.

• The General Counsel at Monolithic Power Systems (MPWR) sold another $36M of the stock

• The CEO at Upwork (UPWK) sold another $7M of the stock (2nd largest sale, out of 17).

• More insider selling at TheRealReal (REAL) after its 160% returns in the last 6 months

• and more…

I go into more depth on these companies in the CEO Watcher Premium sections below.

Commentary

CEO purchases have been crushing it recently.

I shared in the Discord that I recently started a small $10k CEO Watcher Portfolio that will systematically copy the top insider trades. The idea is that his portfolio will be as rule-based as possible to best represent the CEO Watcher data and remove my own portfolio management/stock picking skills (or lack thereof).

I’m still working out the final details before fully sharing with CEO Watcher Premium subs, but the gist is that the portfolio will be equally weighted across the highest-signal insider trades we find.

I decided to make it a real-money portfolio v a paper account so there is some skin in the game and to see if we can get a $10k portfolio to beat the S&P and pay for CEO Watcher Premium (it’s already paid for 1.5 years after just a few weeks).

Anyway, the point of this was to show that CEO purchases have been crushing it recently. The four best-performing stocks in the CEO Watcher Portfolio are all from copying CEO purchases.

They are up an average of 40%, and I’ve been holding them all for less than two weeks (and this excludes SONO, which is up 14%, but I got stopped out of before it popped).

I just ran some quick analysis on our database, and in the last 3 months, CEO purchases have outperformed the market by nearly 2x on average (1.9% returns v 1.0%) across 321 trades.

I’ve found that the CEO purchases perform much better when they are unscheduled, sizable ($100k+), and at either relatively well-known companies, pharma stocks, or stocks that have dipped (or a combo).

Historically speaking, CEO purchases don’t outperform this well, so I’m not sure how long this will last, but I’ll certainly take advantage of it for now.

Anyone in the CEO Watcher Premium Discord can take advantage as well by turning on notifications for the ceo_trades channel. You’ll get real-time alerts when a CEO makes a new trade.

Once I get an alert, I quickly look at the SEC filing (it’s linked in the notification) to check if it’s an unscheduled purchase and see the price they paid, and then go buy the stock if the price spread isn’t too crazy.

This obviously requires you to be quite active, and I still believe that over the long term, the high signal dip buys will perform the best (as our historical analysis suggests), but it’s been working well recently.

keep scrolling. more data below

🔒 Trade Notes

I’ve done a pass on these potentially high-signal trades (mostly dip buys and/or insiders with a good track record). I look at the insider trade signal, stock price action, and company valuation. These are not recommendations, even though I’ll mention if I add them to the CEO Watcher Portfolio. (The most compelling trades are first)

This section is for premium subscribers only. Upgrade at ceowatcher.com to unlock all of the premium sections + full access to the CEO Watcher website + access to the CEO Watcher Discord.

🔒 Need More Research

I’ve done a quick pass on these to verify the trades are unscheduled, and the insiders have a good track record, but I haven’t had time to dive in deeper. They are worth a closer look.

This section is for premium subscribers only. Upgrade at ceowatcher.com to unlock all of the premium sections + full access to the CEO Watcher website + access to the CEO Watcher Discord.

🔒 Data Dump

This section is for premium subscribers only. Upgrade at ceowatcher.com to unlock all of the premium sections + full access to the CEO Watcher website + access to the CEO Watcher Discord.