Top insider trades (Thu, Feb 12)

Connor’s Commentary

There were 199 new insider trades filed.

Two insider trades were flagged as High Signal, and one was added to the CEO Watcher Portfolio. 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.

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.

• A director at KKR (KKR) is trying to buy the dip. They bought $5.25M of the stock after its 20% dip in the last month.

• Four insiders are trying to buy the software dip at Varonis Systems (VRNS) after its 50% dip in the last 6 months. The CEO also gifted his spouse 47,000 shares and children 40,000 shares

• The CEO at Badger Meter (BMI) bought $500k of the stock. It's his first purchase ever (his two previous trades were sales).

• The CEO at Maximus (MMS) bought $250k of the stock after the stocks 20% post-earnings dip. The CFO also bought two days ago.

• The CFO at Tectonic Therapeutics (TECX) bought $129k

• Saba Capital buys another $6.24M of ASA Gold and Precious Metals (ASA). They've been buying non-stop for over 6 months

• Jana Partners sells $48M of TreeHouse Foods (THS). This decreased their listed holdings by 31%.

• The CEO at Cleveland-Cliffs (CLF) sold $37M of the stock after the stock fell 15% after earnings. This is their first sale in nearly 2 years

• The CFO at the Carlisle Companies (CL) sold $10M of the stock. ~$3M was from stock options vesting, but the rest was not.

• The CFO at Goldman Sachs (GS) sold $11M of the stock (largest sale ever, out of 4). The Chief Risk Officer also sold $2M

• AE Red Holdings sells another $14M of Redwire (RDW)

• and more…

Commentary

Our first CEO Watcher Portfolio holding has officially crossed 200% returns since we bought it on December 2nd.

The stock had fallen over 40% from July to November before a sharp 35% bounce in November.

Then a handful of insiders began buying the stock in November. Two directors and a 10% Owner purchased the stock in November, before the CEO purchased it in December.

The CEO then finally purchased the stock at the beginning of December when it was in the high $2s.

This was an interesting setup: it was still a dip buy (the stock was down 25% from the July high), but it had become a momentum buy as well, with the stock up 48% since the November low.

Plus, it was a cluster buy and a CEO purchase.

All of these are positive signals in our system.

There was also a stock pitch from a very good investor on Yellowbrick (link) that came out about a month after our purchase that is worth reading if you are interested in the company.

Another interesting finding is that it was one of the largest cluster purchases at any company in the last three months (relative to market cap).

The insiders purchased 0.38% of the company in open-market purchases.

We haven’t yet backtested this signal, but we have been tracking it in the CEO Watcher Premium Dashboard (linked for Premium subs at the top of the Data Dump section later in this email).

As you can see, the massive purchases at American Bitcoin Corp have not worked due to the poor sentiment around crypto currently, but the other five on the list are up an average of 43% (and the 18 companies where insiders have bought at least 0.05% of the company are up an average of 16.5%, well above the S&P).

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

CEO Watcher Premium

The rest of this email (including today’s top insider trades + all the charts and data) is for CEO Watcher Premium subscribers only. To see an example of the Premium email, click here.

Upgrade to CEO Watcher Premium at ceowatcher.com to unlock:

• The Premium daily emails

• Full access to the website, which has all insider trades back to 2009. It includes search/filters and the returns of every trade and every insider to help you find the top insider trades

• Full access to the CEO Watcher Premium Discord where I share my notes and holdings in the CEO Watcher Portfolio

• The Premium Dashboard, which has a bunch of charts/tables with insider trading data that is updated each day

If CEO Watcher Premium is not for you, I give full refunds with no questions asked.