🟨🤑 Top Insider Trades of the Week (and a few wins)!

Hello hello!

Let’s take a look at some of the top insider trades from the week (and a couple of wins).

Announcements

I set up a subreddit for anyone interested in tracking any insider activity (executives, directors, politicians, hedge funds, etc). This will allow any of you to post any findings you have (anyone can post!) or ask questions/leave suggestions in the comments that I’ll respond to. It’ll also be a way for me to share more info that’s not really for this email (analysis, wins, other insider trades that don’t qualify for this email, etc)

You should definitely check out the analysis I did of the Top 100 Insider Traders (link), give it an upvote, and join the subreddit!

Don’t worry, this weekly email is still the way to get alerted of the Top Insider Trades every week :)

Recent Wins

On January 6th, we alerted about Snehal Patel, CEO at GLSI, and the stock is up 28% since that email (Reddit post about this win). One of our readers even took a position on it and is already up 28%!

In that same email, we alerted about Jack Hightower, CEO at HPK, and the stock is up 24% after they announced strategic alternatives. Read more about this win here

Top CEO Trades of the Week

Reminder: you can read about how CEO Watcher works and how we calculate returns and win rates here

Douglas Lebda - CEO at (link)

This is Doug’s 6th purchase of LendingTree since 2012 and he has been massively successful on his previous purchases. This is the first purchase as part of a new 10b5-1 plan that he put in place back in December (when the stock was the lowest it’s been in 10 years). So we should see him buying up LendingTree stock on a regular basis for the foreseeable future.

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: 50% returns with a 83% win rate (5/6 trades)

1-year: 164% returns with a 100% win rate (5/5 trades)

90-day: 47% returns with a 100% win rate (5/5 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $2,084,200

Purchase Price: $32.03

Current Price: $37.15 (+16%)

Rating

Rating: 9/10

Why: The only real downside here is that the stock is already up 16% since he made this initial trade. However, he set up a 10b5-1 plan meaning that he will be making consistent purchases from here forward, so he clearly believes the price is low. This trade is also 6x bigger than any previous trade, the stock is down 70% in the last year, and he has a great track record.

Dennis Brand - EVP at (link)

This is Dennis’ 8th purchase of BancFirst since 2011 and he has had some really solid long-term success (though his 90-day returns are lacking).

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: 91% returns with a 100% win rate (8/8 trades)

1-year: 74% returns with a 100% win rate (7/7 trades)

90-day: 6% returns with a 57% win rate (4/7 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $166,000

Purchase Price: $83.00

Current Price: $83.24 (+0.3%)

Rating

Rating: 7/10

Why: The two main things holding this back are that he is not the CEO (or even a Chief anything) and this is an average to slightly below-average purchase for him in terms of dollar amounts (his biggest is $488k). His 90-day returns are also pretty lackluster. However, his 1-year and all-time returns and win rates are fantastic, the stock is down 30% in the last six months, and the stock is still at nearly the exact same price he paid.

David Goeddel - Director at TNYA 0.96%↑ and

Last week (email here) we found him buying TNYA for the first time since November. This week he bought himself another $174k of TNYA (Form 4) and $240k of NGM (first Form 4 | second Form 4). If you want to read more about the TNYA trade, read last week’s email. I’m going to focus on NGM in this one.

His overall returns are 💩, but his 1-year and 90-day returns are pretty great driven by his NGM returns. For NGM, he has a 97% win rate and 40% returns over 1 year and a 75% win rate and 15% returns over 90 days.

The most interesting thing about the purchases is that he and The Column Group (a healthcare VC Firm) have been consistently buying up tons of it since May of 2022. They started buying when the price was $11, kept buying when the price got above $13, and are still buying after the stock dropped down into the $4s due to one of their eye disease drugs failing a mid-stage clinical trial (see all the purchases here)

Returns and Win Rate

Overall: -30% (🤮) returns with a 25% win rate (14/56 trades were profitable)

1-year: 53% returns with a 97% win rate (32/33 trades)

90-day: 35% returns with a 76% win rate (34/45 trades)

Purchase Data

Total Amount Purchased: $240,097

Purchase Price: $5.00

Current Price: $5.12 (+9%)

Rating

Rating: 4/10

Why: He’s been buying a ton of NGM over the last 9 months which is definitely bullish. However, the world of pharma can be tough as demonstrated by his buying a bunch of stock while the price was above $13 before it fell below $5 (though he did happen to take a break from purchasing for the 4 months before that negative trial news came out). It appears that he does a pretty good job buying in the short-term (his 90-day and 1-year returns are pretty good), but pharma makes it tough to be good long-term.

Other Yellowbrick Products

Check out some of the other stuff we have built!

Yellowbrick - Social stocks platform to follow other top investors, see their holdings and returns, and get notified when they make a trade (definitely sign up for this)

CEO Leaderboard - The top 100 CEOs based on their 1-Year Returns

CEODough - Type in a ticker to see how much money the execs make

Politician Watcher (coming soon) - Tracking the top Politician Trades

Hedge Fund Watcher (coming soon) - Tracking the top Hedge Fund Trades

Stock Alerts (coming soon) - Get notified when a stock reaches your target price

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Connor