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It is not uncommon to see companies perform well in the years after insiders buy shares. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So before you buy or sell Northern Star Resources Limited (ASX:NST), you may well want to know whether insiders have been buying or selling.
What Is Insider Buying?
It’s quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, such insiders must disclose their trading activities, and not trade on inside information.
We would never suggest that investors should base their decisions solely on what the directors of a company have been doing. But equally, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. For example, a Harvard University study found that ‘insider purchases earn abnormal returns of more than 6% per year.’
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The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Northern Star Resources
Executive Chairman William Beament made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for AU$9.1m worth of shares at a price of AU$9.08 each. That means that an insider was selling shares at slightly below the current price (AU$9.39). Even though it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, that’s certainly not a positive sign, in our book. We generally consider it a negative if insiders have been selling on market, especially if they did so below the current price. It is worth noting that this sale was only 10.3% of William Beament’s holding.
We note that in the last year insiders divested 1.25m shares for a total of AU$11m. All up, insiders sold more shares in Northern Star Resources than they bought, over the last year. The average sell price was around AU$8.58. We don’t gain much confidence from insider selling near the recent share price. But we don’t put too much weight on the insider selling, since sellers could have personal reasons. You can see the insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year depicted in the chart below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!
For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.