Top insider trades (Mon, Feb 23)

Connor’s Commentary

There were 195 new insider trades filed.

One insider trade was flagged as High Signal. CEO Watcher Premium subs can see those in the Trade Notes section of this email or the CEO Watcher Premium Dashboard that is linked in the Data Dump section.

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• Director at MSCI (MSCI) bought $2M (largest purchase, out of 3). The CEO also bought last week.

• The interim CEO at Arrow Electronics (ARW) bought $600k (largest purchase, out of 5). 5 insiders sold the stock this month as well, so an odd situation. The stock is up almost 50% in the last 3 months

• The CEO at Conduent (CDNT) bought $313k (largest purchase, out of 40). 2 other execs also bought the stock. The stock is down 30% in the last month.

• Director at TCW Strategic Income Fund (TSI) bought $232k (2nd largest purchase, out of 5). They've bought the stock 4 times in the last week.

• A director at Accuray (ARAY) bought $100k (first-ever purchase). The stock is down 60% in the previous 6 months.

• The co-President sold $7.78M of Virtu Financial (VIRT) (first-ever sale). Two other insiders also sold this month.

• The President of Global SCS & DTS at Ryder System (R) sold $6.64M (largest sale ever, out of 7). The stock is up 30% in the last 3 months. 7 other insiders have also sold this month.

• CEO at Watts Water Technologies (WTS) sold $5.26M (largest sale, out of 15). The stock is up 50% in the previous year. The General Counsel also sold this month.

• Group President at American Express (AXP) sold $4.77M (largest sale ever, out of 6). This decreased their holdings by over 50%. 5 other insiders also sold recently.

• The CEO at Covenant Logistics (CVLG) sold $4.41M (4th largest sale, out of 18). They've sold the stock 3 times this month.

• The CEO at CSX Corp (CSX) sold $3.74M (largest sale ever, out of 5). The Chairman also sold the stock last week.

• and more…

Commentary

With software stocks getting decimated over the last few months, I wanted to see if there was any increase in insider buying.

I pulled all of the unscheduled insider trades at software companies back to 2010 and plotted the percentage of those trades that were buys (grouped by quarter).

There is clearly a massive spike this quarter. The two other largest spikes came in 2022 (when software stocks fell by over 40%) and the end of 2015 / beginning of 2016 (when software stocks fell by 20%).

Insiders were a little early in both cases, beginning their uptick in purchases two quarters before software bottomed.

However, software obviously recovered in both cases and was up 40% in the following year after it bottomed.

We are still in the latter half of earnings season for Q4, so many execs are in a blackout and can’t trade.

We should see a bunch of insider trades come in over the next month, and we will see if the percentage of insider trades that are buys remains elevated for this quarter.

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

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