Top insider trades (Mon, Dec 15)

Connor’s Commentary

There were 270 new insider trades filed.

• Alexandria REIT (ARE) director is buying the dip. It’s his first-ever purchase

• Director at Gartner (IT) bought $10M of the stock for the first time

• CFO at Warner Music Group (WMG) bought $1M of the stock. First-ever purchase

• CFO at Autozone (AZO) bought the stock for the first time ever after its 20% dip

• CEO at Celanese Corp (CE) bought $158k of the stock. It’s his first-ever purchase

• Director at Carlyle Group Inc. (CG) sold $35M of the stock. It’s his first sale in over 3 years

• The CEO at Las Vegas Sands (LVS) continues to sell a ton of the stock

• Kimbal Musk sells $25M of Tesla (TSLA)

• President at Carpenter Technology (CRS) sold $23M. It’s his first sale in over 2 years

• Head of Strategy at StepStone (STEP) group sold $12.7M of the stock

• and much more…

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

Commentary

A subscriber asked me to take a look at Consumer Staples stocks because they heard that the sector has recently had its most insider buying in the last 10 years.

First, let’s check if insiders are actually buying more Consumer Staples stocks than normal.

The answer is… kind of. The quarter isn’t quite over yet, so looking at the total number of insider buys isn’t the best way to do this, but it can give us an idea.

The chart below shows that we are already over the 100 mark with ~15% of the quarter left. So we will probably end the quarter with 120-130 insider purchases, which certainly puts it near the top end of the range, but not #1.

However, if we look at the ratio of insider trades that are buys (a much better metric in my opinion), we do see that this quarter is the most bullish quarter in at least the last 10 years.

The only two other quarters where the ratio was above 30% were Q2 of this year (the Trump Tariffs) and Q4 of 2023 (Q3 of 2023 was pretty close too).

Unfortunately, the results are mixed.

The Consumer Staples sector has not performed well since the end of Q2 of this year.

However, the end of 2023 was literally one of the best times ever to buy Consumer Staples.

While Consumer Staples aren’t my cup of tea, there is a strong argument that insiders are the most bullish they have been in at least a decade.

If you are interested in Consumer Staples, here are some stocks with insider buying in the last couple of months that you should look at:

• HF Foods Group Inc. (HFFG) - four insiders bought in November

• Primo Brands (PRMB) - four insiders bought the post-earnings dip in November

• Utz Brands (UTZ) - a whole bunch of insiders bought the stock in November

• Hershey (HSY) - the CEO bought the stock last month

• WD-40 Company (WDFC) - five insiders bought the stock at the end of October

• Energizer Holdings (ENR) - two insiders bought the stock at the beginning of December

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

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