There's been a lot of discussion in 2018 about insiders selling their stocks, including the 10b5-1 pre-planned sales by CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.
But what about insider buying?
Buys tell you much more about what is going on at a company than sales ever could.
When an insider buys, they are using their own cash to buy more shares even though they usually have thousands of shares already.
This summer, an insider buying trend from 2016 has returned but hardly anyone is talking about it.
The insiders are back buying bank stocks.
In 2016, the Bankers Dove In
If you recall, one of the biggest CEO insider buys in the last few years was by Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase who bought 500,000 shares of JP Morgan for $26 million in February 2016.
On the day he bought, JPMorgan's shares had hit a new 2016 low and were down 16.5% year-to-date thanks to the early year stock market sell off.
At the time, Dimon already had 7 million shares of JPMorgan stock in his 401k and his wife also owned a million shares in her own account.
It was just Dimon's third purchase of shares on the open market in the prior 12 years. He bought 500,000 shares in January 2009 during the Great Recession doom when bank shares were plunging to multi-year lows and another 500,000 in July 2012.
What did Jamie Dimon know that February?
The shares have since soared over 90%.
They’re at it Again in 2018
2016, it turns out, wasn’t a fluke.
Despite the rally in bank stocks after those 2016 lows, the insiders are diving in for even more shares in 2018.
At Synovus Financial, a Columbus Georgia bank with operations in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee with a market cap of $6 billion, three insiders jumped in to buy as the shares weakened over the last three months, sliding 6.5%.
On July 27, a Director and the General Counsel both bought even though both have thousands of shares. On August 2, the CFO bought for the first time since joining the bank in 2016.
Another cluster buy by insiders was at First Horizon National.
Founded in 1864, First Horizon is the 14th oldest national bank charter in the country. It’s a regional bank headquartered in Tennessee.
On Aug 1, a director bought 100,000 shares for $1.82 million. That’s a big purchase for a director who already had over 500,000 shares.
Prior to his purchase, a different director bought shares on July 25 and the CEO bought on July 31.
Shares of First Horizon had fallen about 3% over the last 3 months.
Continued . . .
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Bank Stock to Buy Today
Today, Zacks recommends a regional bank with one of the best earnings reports of the quarter.
Something's going on at that bank because the CFO just used $119,049 of his own money to buy its stock. The CEO dug even deeper into his pocket, investing $592,264. They already owned thousands of shares. Why suddenly buy more? Only one reason: They're convinced the stock is going up in price.
Using a proprietary strategy, we have targeted that buy plus a handful of other compelling stocks with insider purchases. These time-sensitive opportunities are now open to public view – but only until Sunday, August 26.
See hand-picked insider trades now >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why would these CEOs and corporate insiders spend so much of their money on their own companies’ stock when they already own a ton of shares already?
Greed!
Pure and simple.
The opportunity to make more money motivates people- even people who are already millionaires like Jamie Dimon.
If top insiders are buying, it’s because they know something very good is going on at the company. Maybe it is a new product. Or contract. Or pending merger.
Whatever the reason, they are very confident that shares will be on the rise. After all, who would buy more stock in a company if they knew it was sinking???
Buy When the Insiders Buy
When high level insiders buy, they are required to report the purchases to the SEC within 48 hours of the trade. The trade then becomes public information.
Hedge funds and other professional investors routinely use this information to get an edge on their trades.
For most of us, though, it’s not easy to get access to the insider information. While the media will trumpet huge insider buys like Dimon’s $26 million buy, did you hear anything about First Horizon’s CEO D. Bryan Jordan’s $440,000 buy of 24,900 shares on July 31, 2018?
The challenge is getting easy and reliable access to all the insider trades and then figuring out which ones to buy.
Where to Find the Insider Buys
Anyone can go on the SEC website and get the insider trading information but it’s time consuming to search by individual companies.
Some investment firms collect the insider buying data and can provide it to you as a weekly list. Have you ever seen one of those lists? The sheer number of companies can be overwhelming.
In some instances, the insiders have been known to buy en masse. Then what’s an investor to do?
This happened during the stock market dip in August 2011. As stock prices fell, insiders felt that their companies were undervalued and rushed out to buy shares.
That August, insiders bought stock in 50 different S&P 500 companies in just one week. Even if you got a list of those stocks, how would you narrow it down to the stocks that were truly worth buying?
To solve this problem, our Zacks research team developed a strategy that monitors selected insider buying activity at companies that already show strong earnings and excellent valuations. We do the work of sifting through all the insider buys so you don’t have to.
Just a handful of stocks meet the demanding criteria of our Zacks' Insider Trader.
Only 8 insider buys currently make the grade.
One of them particularly intrigues me because it's part of today's "gold rush" of insider activity in the financial industry.
This mid-cap regional bank scored a whopping earnings beat and the CFO quickly poured in $119,049 of his own money into the stock. The CEO jumped in with a $592,264 buy.
These insider moves are even more eye-opening because this is the first open-market purchase by these two insiders in years. They already owned thousands of shares. Why are they spending their own money to buy now?
They clearly see the price of this stock going up, and so do I.
Now You Can Load Up on Shares Along with These Officers
Today I invite you to look into our portfolio and explore this buy plus 7 other insider trades with impressive gain potential.
As an added bonus, you may download 7 Stocks Set to Double free of charge. This Special Report balances our shorter-term Insider Trader with 7 explosive long-term stocks that Zacks experts predict could gain +100% or more over the next year.
Important note: Access to the portfolio and Special Report is limited. This opportunity ends midnight Sunday, August 26.
See our insider trades and download 7 Stocks Set to Double now >>
Best,
Tracey
Tracey Ryniec, Zacks' value and insider strategist, is Editor in Charge of the Insider Trader portfolio.
Image: Bigstock
This is Where the Insiders are Buying Right Now
There's been a lot of discussion in 2018 about insiders selling their stocks, including the 10b5-1 pre-planned sales by CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.
But what about insider buying?
Buys tell you much more about what is going on at a company than sales ever could.
When an insider buys, they are using their own cash to buy more shares even though they usually have thousands of shares already.
This summer, an insider buying trend from 2016 has returned but hardly anyone is talking about it.
The insiders are back buying bank stocks.
In 2016, the Bankers Dove In
If you recall, one of the biggest CEO insider buys in the last few years was by Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase who bought 500,000 shares of JP Morgan for $26 million in February 2016.
On the day he bought, JPMorgan's shares had hit a new 2016 low and were down 16.5% year-to-date thanks to the early year stock market sell off.
At the time, Dimon already had 7 million shares of JPMorgan stock in his 401k and his wife also owned a million shares in her own account.
It was just Dimon's third purchase of shares on the open market in the prior 12 years. He bought 500,000 shares in January 2009 during the Great Recession doom when bank shares were plunging to multi-year lows and another 500,000 in July 2012.
What did Jamie Dimon know that February?
The shares have since soared over 90%.
They’re at it Again in 2018
2016, it turns out, wasn’t a fluke.
Despite the rally in bank stocks after those 2016 lows, the insiders are diving in for even more shares in 2018.
At Synovus Financial, a Columbus Georgia bank with operations in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida and Tennessee with a market cap of $6 billion, three insiders jumped in to buy as the shares weakened over the last three months, sliding 6.5%.
On July 27, a Director and the General Counsel both bought even though both have thousands of shares. On August 2, the CFO bought for the first time since joining the bank in 2016.
Another cluster buy by insiders was at First Horizon National.
Founded in 1864, First Horizon is the 14th oldest national bank charter in the country. It’s a regional bank headquartered in Tennessee.
On Aug 1, a director bought 100,000 shares for $1.82 million. That’s a big purchase for a director who already had over 500,000 shares.
Prior to his purchase, a different director bought shares on July 25 and the CEO bought on July 31.
Shares of First Horizon had fallen about 3% over the last 3 months.
Continued . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bank Stock to Buy Today
Today, Zacks recommends a regional bank with one of the best earnings reports of the quarter.
Something's going on at that bank because the CFO just used $119,049 of his own money to buy its stock. The CEO dug even deeper into his pocket, investing $592,264. They already owned thousands of shares. Why suddenly buy more? Only one reason: They're convinced the stock is going up in price.
Using a proprietary strategy, we have targeted that buy plus a handful of other compelling stocks with insider purchases. These time-sensitive opportunities are now open to public view – but only until Sunday, August 26.
See hand-picked insider trades now >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why would these CEOs and corporate insiders spend so much of their money on their own companies’ stock when they already own a ton of shares already?
Greed!
Pure and simple.
The opportunity to make more money motivates people- even people who are already millionaires like Jamie Dimon.
If top insiders are buying, it’s because they know something very good is going on at the company. Maybe it is a new product. Or contract. Or pending merger.
Whatever the reason, they are very confident that shares will be on the rise. After all, who would buy more stock in a company if they knew it was sinking???
Buy When the Insiders Buy
When high level insiders buy, they are required to report the purchases to the SEC within 48 hours of the trade. The trade then becomes public information.
Hedge funds and other professional investors routinely use this information to get an edge on their trades.
For most of us, though, it’s not easy to get access to the insider information. While the media will trumpet huge insider buys like Dimon’s $26 million buy, did you hear anything about First Horizon’s CEO D. Bryan Jordan’s $440,000 buy of 24,900 shares on July 31, 2018?
The challenge is getting easy and reliable access to all the insider trades and then figuring out which ones to buy.
Where to Find the Insider Buys
Anyone can go on the SEC website and get the insider trading information but it’s time consuming to search by individual companies.
Some investment firms collect the insider buying data and can provide it to you as a weekly list. Have you ever seen one of those lists? The sheer number of companies can be overwhelming.
In some instances, the insiders have been known to buy en masse. Then what’s an investor to do?
This happened during the stock market dip in August 2011. As stock prices fell, insiders felt that their companies were undervalued and rushed out to buy shares.
That August, insiders bought stock in 50 different S&P 500 companies in just one week. Even if you got a list of those stocks, how would you narrow it down to the stocks that were truly worth buying?
To solve this problem, our Zacks research team developed a strategy that monitors selected insider buying activity at companies that already show strong earnings and excellent valuations. We do the work of sifting through all the insider buys so you don’t have to.
Just a handful of stocks meet the demanding criteria of our Zacks' Insider Trader.
Only 8 insider buys currently make the grade.
One of them particularly intrigues me because it's part of today's "gold rush" of insider activity in the financial industry.
This mid-cap regional bank scored a whopping earnings beat and the CFO quickly poured in $119,049 of his own money into the stock. The CEO jumped in with a $592,264 buy.
These insider moves are even more eye-opening because this is the first open-market purchase by these two insiders in years. They already owned thousands of shares. Why are they spending their own money to buy now?
They clearly see the price of this stock going up, and so do I.
Now You Can Load Up on Shares Along with These Officers
Today I invite you to look into our portfolio and explore this buy plus 7 other insider trades with impressive gain potential.
As an added bonus, you may download 7 Stocks Set to Double free of charge. This Special Report balances our shorter-term Insider Trader with 7 explosive long-term stocks that Zacks experts predict could gain +100% or more over the next year.
Important note: Access to the portfolio and Special Report is limited. This opportunity ends midnight Sunday, August 26.
See our insider trades and download 7 Stocks Set to Double now >>
Best,
Tracey
Tracey Ryniec, Zacks' value and insider strategist, is Editor in Charge of the Insider Trader portfolio.