6 stocks exhibiting a golden cross with insider purchasing activity (Seeking Alpha): Looks at $SD, $TRC, $CKP, and more.
Insider Alert: Is the tech sector going to rally in 2011? (Fool.com): Insider buys at $DELL and $AMT.
Broad insider selling doesn’t necessarily a signal stocks are overvalued (Financial Post)
20 stocks Wall Street analysts expect to drop the most + experiencing insider selling (Insider Monkey): Includes $NFLX, $SHLD, $NVDA, $FFIV
More buying at $GAM, $PRS (J3SG)
TheStreet.com has a list of stocks with significant insider buying and/or selling. Included: $TIE, $LEX, $PNC, and $BBY saw insider purchasing while $GOOG, $MCK, $QCOM, $F, and $HPQ saw insiders unloading stock. (TheStreet.com)
List of insider buys from Bloggingstocks includes: $LGF, $MAYS, $PZG, and $GAM. (BloggingStocks)
$OPK continues to see insider buying, as does $UMH, $BPAX, and $FFBC (JS3G)
On a macro level, for the week ending January 14, 2011, no insider buying activity was recorded. Whoa. (zero hedge)
Lots of multiple, ongoing insider buying going on at International Speedway Corp, $ISCA, and York Water, $YORW, and at CNB Corp ($CNBW) as well, with a singular large sale at Unit Corp, $UNT. (J3SG)
More on the imbalanced selling going on in the market in general and at $AMZN, $HPQ, $ATHR, and $QCOM in particular. (24/7 Wall St)
$LWSN, $TOL, $HAIN, and $MA all passing the insider trading screen at TheStreet.com (TheStreet.com)
114 times more insider selling than buying in first week of 2011 (Zero Hedge)
5 Dogs of the Dow worth betting on (Seeking Alpha): This one highlights insider buying at $INTC and $VZ
A Safety Dance for 4 Buy/Writes in January (Seeking Alpha): $WFR features prominently.
Value Play (Benzinga): $CA passes a screen that includes recent insider buying.
Stock with the largest increase in institutional buying from 13F holdings (Whale Wisdom): The winner? Kinross Gold, $KGC
2 stocks with bullish insider buying (Street Authority): This article looks at aggressive insider buying in Lincoln Educational ($LINC) and Dollar General ($DG).
5 stocks insiders are buying in 2011 (Insider Monkey): This post focusing on insider buys at 5 firms: Winmark ($WINA), Trailer Bridge ($TRBR), Cogent Communications ($CCOI), Diamond Foods ($DMND), and EQT Corp ($EQT).
Which stock falls first (Motley Fool): In spite of insider selling, this article takes a balanced look at Wynn Resorts ($WYNN).
Insider buying/trading daily screen (J3SG): Today’s screen included lots of insider buying in Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services, $LTS.
Two good articles over on the Motley Fool:
Both these articles were written by Kapitall. Check out their tools and the company is fresh off a significant funding round.
Interesting article about CFO and CTO selling at First Solar ($FSLR)
CXO Advisory has a great piece on the evolving informativeness of insider trading (sub required) from a paper entitled “Has the Informativeness of Insider Filing Changed Post Sox? Has the Latest Credit Crunch Improved this Informativeness?” (Ashrafee Hossain).
Evidence indicates that implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the credit crisis have both enhanced the informativeness of insider trading data as reported via SEC Form 4.
This week’s episode of Tradestreaming Radio is up and ready for listen. Let me know what you think and if you have ideas for future shows. You can listen below, find the transcript below or download directly to you iPod/iPhone via iTunes — search for Tradestream or go here.
This episode includes
With the daily news of hedge funds being raided and expert networks being investigated, I wanted to put together a resource sheet for those looking to delve a bit further into the insider trading game.
Decoding Insider Trading (Cohen): This new paper looks at a methodology to isolate insider traders acting on good information from noisy trades. By looking at individual trades — versus looking at all insider activity — investors can mimic better-performing trades, boosting performance of insider trading strategies.
Law and Economics of Insider Trading: A Comprehesive Primer (Bainbridge) 84 pages of insider trading awesomeness. This 2001 paper deals with everything from the origins of current laws prohibiting insider trading to defining an insider to making a case for and against regulating insider trading. For a smaller, more concise paper on insider trading, see Bainbridge’s Insider Trading: An Overview
Stock Market Anomalies: What can we learn from repurchases and insider trading (Core, Guay, Richardson, Verdi)
How Informative are Analyst Recommendations and Insider Trading (Hsieh, Ng, and Wang) Evidence points to insider trading and analyst recommendations giving conflicting signals. This paper documents that and provides theory why this may be the case.
What Insiders Know about Future Earnings and How They Use It: Evidence from Insider Trades (Ke, Huddart, Petroni) Insiders do trade on this stuff up to 2 years before public release.
Do Insider Trades Reflect Superior Knowledge About Future Cash Flow Realizations (Piotroski, Roulstone) Short answer: yes.
Insider Trade Disclosure, Market Efficiency, and Liquidity (Buffa): Policy implications after finding that informational efficiency and liquidity are lower in more transparent markets
Institutional Investors and Insider Trading Profitability (Markarian, Bricker) Insider profits are inversely related to presence of institutional ownership. Hedge funds/mutual funds may provide monitoring effect.
WSJ on Insider Trading (sub. req’d)
Bloomberg.com: Insider Trading
Google fastflip on Insider Trading
Tradestreaming on Insider Trading
Dealbreaker’s Insider Trading Fest(ivus)
Investment Intelligence from Insider Trading
Profit from Legal Insider Trading: Invest Today on Tomorrow’s News
The Vital Few vs. the Trivial Many : Invest with the Insiders, Not the Masses
In an incredible twist, the FBI and DOJ have raided the Yahoo Message Boards today as part of an expanding investigation into insider trading. According to most recent reports, the FBI is investigating numerous players in the investment field (including 6 hedge funds) in what pundits are calling Insider Trading Fest(ivus)
Posing as bigdaddywantmoney123 and insiderhoneypot, two detectives have been monitoring suspicious activity for the past 7-11 years on the industry’s most active site to share useless, inane, political opinions.
After serving a warrant to…um…eh…(WTF?? Who’s in charge over there at Yahoo?!), the FBI sent a team of forensic detectives to do their thing on the Yahoo Finance Message Boards on a set of servers located in Sunnyvale, CA.
$BIDU: On the Baidu ($BIDU) message board, asiantradermakingseriousyuan said that his cousin’s brother’s wife who lives in Beijing knows BIDU’s CEO’s brother’s nanny and she says the company is on fire. Clearly, impactful nonpublic information. Google, here we come!
$AAPL: Over on the media device juggernaut’s boards, user macforlifebaby said that he’s got an in with a janitor who cleans Steve Job’s dentist’s office and reportedly, the Apple Computer CEO had a least three teeth whitenings in the past 3 years. Heady stuff — what you trying to hide, Steve, eh??
$AMZN: This one’s really good. You know the hot Kindle book reader device sold by Amazon.com. Well, supposedly, someone’s posting on the message boards who works at UPS in Seattle and he estimated that he’s picking up more boxes this year than ever before at the retailing giant. God, that’s good info!
$PCLN: This one seems a bit far-fetched but illustrates how individual investors are not 
playing on a level playing field when it comes to investing. So, you know how you can bid on hotel rooms on Priceline.com? Well the stock is one of the best performers over the past 12 months and IwanttohaveWilliamShatnersbaby says that he (she?) noticed that hotels in New York city are going for less than they were 3 months ago. Short it baby!!
In all seriousness, the FBI is taking these allegations seriously and says its aim is to prevent leakage of potentially tradeable info onto the message boards. The FBI has suggested the Internet to be turned off periodically and power cut to those homes suspected of aiding and abetting these criminals.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave last week (i hear it’s nice there this time of year), you’ve probably seen/heard/felt the aftereffects of the WSJ article U.S. in Vast Insider Trading Probe.
The short of it is:
Interesting for readers of Tradestreaming and my book is the focus on expert networks. As per the WSJ
One focus of the criminal investigation is examining whether nonpublic information was passed along by independent analysts and consultants who work for companies that provide “expert network” services to hedge funds and mutual funds. These companies set up meetings and calls with current and former managers from hundreds of companies for traders seeking an investing edge.
These expert networks are de facto for most large investment funds. As I wrote, expert networks like Gerson Lehrman provide unique research experiences, connecting fund analyst with industry experts for one-off interviews.
Unlike traditional sell-side research that is distributed to many investors and loses its value with greater distribution, expert networks provide extremely valuable interactions. My book includes an interview with a senior GLG executive. Much of our time spent together was spent dissecting the compliance engine the leading network had put together and I believe this was as much for PR purposes as much as it was for legal purposes.
It is clear that expert networks have been cited numerous times in the past few years as potentially being involved in facilitating investors’ access to material nonpublic information. However, we are convinced that the financial markets are better off using “best of breed” expert networks than without them — Integrity Research
Other insider trading rings busted recently (like Galleon) were their own creations. I have to agree with Integrity Research‘s opinion — this wasn’t by chance. If Galleon’s vast web of insider information had existed on GLG’s platform, there would have been a clear audit trail of who was involved and to what level. That didn’t occur — instead, by using individual contacts, Galleon was able to obfuscate its activities for years.
That wouldn’t have happened using a professional expert network and markets are better off by having these. That said, it’s clear why GLG isn’t able to go public and we’re probably looking at increased regulation of these platforms (which would push more investors to skirt their use).
What might happen, regardless of the outcome of this particular probe, is
