Sep 21: Are Insiders Buying Or Selling?

The 'markets' are hot yes?

Here's the chart of S&P 500.

Yes, the market is clearly moving much higher. Yes, the good times are back or what!!!

But then... the glaring thing of course is the utter lack of volume. Volume means market participation and volume is less than 4B! And mind you traded volume of around 4B is already utter dismal. Yeah, it's the market broken or dead?

And then we have seen the incredible amount of money redeemed from equity mutual fund investors.

• More Money Redeemed From Equity Mutual Funds
• 65 Billion Outflow From Long Term Equity Funds
• 58 Billion Reason Why Americans Thinks Their Stock Market Sucks!
• Americans Pulled USD 53.279 Billion Out Of The Equity Markets
• Stocks Rally And US Equity Investors Rallied To Get Out Of the Equity Markets
• Main Street Telling Wall Street That The Equity Markets Stinks!
• Stocks Are Flying To The Orbit But Investors Keeps Cashing Out!
• Since 28th April 2010, Americans Pulled USD 42.116 Billion Out From Equities!
• more here

And last week, posted last Tuesday: Are Insiders Buying Or Selling?

We have Bloomberg publishing the list of S&P corporate insiders disposing their shares. The total amount of shares disposed totally dominates the amount of corporate insiders buying shares.

Which begs the questions to be asked, 'If the markets are really so hot, why are the insiders selling their shares like plaque? Why are mutual fund equity investors fleeing the stock markets? Surely they can tell that the market is hot, right? So why the disposals?'

If things are getting better then why are these insiders, who probably are more privy to the information regarding the health of their business, disposing their shares?

Anyway, here's the latest update: Weekly Insider Buying and Selling by S&P 500 Companies. ( Before you click the link or read the below, have a guess. Markets are 'so hot', what do you think the insiders are doing? Are they buying or are they selling?)

The buyers...

Yeah... that's all.

The sellers...

Well as per Bloomberg data, the SP 500 Insider Buyers purchased some 1.4 million worth of shares. The SP 500 Insider Sellers disposed some 411 million worth of shares.

How do yo want to interpret this?

Let's look at the list of sellers.

Top of the list is Heinz. Some 75.8 Million worth of shares were disposed by insiders!

Amazingly, Heniz is a featured BUY stock ( LOL!) from the Street.com (LOL! LOL! )

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10866128/4/breakout-stocks-of-the-week.html

• Shares of Heinz have managed to trade above some heavy overhead resistance at around $47 a share. This overhead resistance level is very important, because since March the stock has failed to take it out to the upside. Investors are now going to want to watch to see if volume can continue to expand above the three-month average daily volume of 2.5 million shares. Follow through volume that is greater than the previous trading session is exactly what is happening here on Heinz. That is bullish action for any stock.
  >>>Top-Rated Food Product Stocks
  If this breakout can hold above $47, then this stock could be setting up to test the next key area of overhead resistance at around $50 to $52 a share. However, if I was long Heinz, I would not want to see the stock come back and close under $47 on heavy volume. A move like that would have me cautious on on the shares in the near term.

Here's data on Heinz: http://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=HNZ&b=2

Current PE of 16.33 and a Forward PE of 14.42.

And here's the Heinz insiders who are selling..

Then we have Google.

http://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=GOOG&b=2

The recommendations from the Street on Google.

Doesn't look too 'shabby' or 'bad' yes?

Most rate Google above 600. :D

And Google last traded at ONLY 508.28.

But... the insiders.... thinks otherwise. (ps the list is rather so long so I only show since Aug)

Then we have Starbucks.

http://www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=SBUX&b=2

Current PE 24.56, Forward PE 18.38.


Recent calls from the Street reckons that the stock should be worth around 30 bucks at least.

And what does the Insiders reckon they should do?

Apparently, even Howard Schultz, the Chairman and President, reckons that it's a wonderful time to exercise their options and dispose (or issit dump) them onto the market! (ps: did you see that the bulk of his options cost was only 10.09! And he disposed them at around 25 bucks! hey world, corporate America, the system works! Reward the rich, screw the poor! )

So the top 3 disposals from insiders.

Consider the industry/sector of their business.

And they are disposing!

How?

Of course... they could all be wrong in disposing their shares but what if they are correct?