Top insider trades (Thu, Jan 29)

Connor’s Commentary

There were 85 new insider trades filed.

No insider trades were flagged as High Signal.

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 second insider buys Ally Financial (ALLY) stock this week. The CFO just bought $500k

• A director at Amerant Bancorp (AMTB) bought $100k of the stock, which increased their listed holdings by 960%

• CEO at ZIVO Bioscience (ZIVO) bought $100k of the stock (a director also bought). Insider buys at biotechs have been working well, but previous insider buys at ZIVO have not worked.

• An interesting situation at Live Oak Bancshares (LOB) where the Chief Risk Officer bought $100k on the same day the Chief Experience Officer sold $378k. However, the Chief Experience Officer was selling options that expire next month, and they actually held on to ~1/3 of the options they exercised.

• CEO at Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) sells $22M of the stock. The stock is up 50% in the last year.

• Vice Chairman at Interactive Brokers (IBKR) sells $11.76M just a few days after selling $19M. It’s his 4th largest sale ever (out of 156)

• CEO, CFO, and CMO at Protagonist Therapeutics (PTGX) are all selling the stock after its 116% run up in the last year.

• Chief Legal Officer at United Parcel Service (UPS) sold $2.66M of the stock after its 30% run up since July

• and more…

Commentary

Well, we just closed out another big biotech win in the CEO Watcher Portfolio, though it ended on a pretty frustrating note.

As a reminder, 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 January 8th, only one trade (out of 197) qualified as a High Signal Trade and was added to the CEO Watcher Portfolio. That trade was for Intellia Therapeutics (NTLA).

As you can see, the stock tanked at the end of 2025 after a regulatory pause on their Phase 3 trial due to safety concerns.

But we found a very High Signal insider purchase a few months later on January 8th (the blue arrow above). The note I shared with CEO Watcher Premium members is shown in the screenshot below. The gist is that a director was buying the stock for the first time, after 9 prior sales (reversals), and it was a dip buy, as the stock was still down over 60%.

The stock then basically ran straight up to $16 (from our purchase price of $10.57) over the next two weeks before starting to chop around.

Then, just a couple of days ago, the FDA lifted the clinical hold and shot the stock up another 20%!

Fortunately, we sold half of the stock near the peak at $16.70 because the stock then immediately gave back that entire 20% gain (and more). We ended up getting stopped out of the rest of our shares at $13.70.

Overall, we made 44% returns in just three weeks.

While I should never complain about 44% returns, I will anyway because biotech was very weak this week, which I think contributed to NTLA giving back its entire 20% pop after the FDA lifted its clinical hold (and many investors were likely taking profits).

Of course, we got stopped out at basically the exact bottom, and the stock is back up to $14.50, but such is life.

On to the next.

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.

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

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