Artwork by Elias Stein
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Rising interest rates and the war in Ukraine led to a sharp sell-off in stocks and a brief rally in the first quarter. For the most part, corporate insiders stayed away from both.
The number of insider sellers fell to 3,379 in the first quarter, the lowest since 2018, according to investment research firm Verity. Unique insider buyers increased year over year, but fell to 1,606 from the fourth quarter. These insiders, such as officers and directors, must disclose stock trades to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Verity research director Ben Silverman said the slowdown means insiders chose not to generate cash and may indicate some stocks fell below minimum sell thresholds in auto trading plans. In short, he says, insiders haven’t been buying on the downside. One explanation: 2021 has seen a flurry of insider selling, which could limit buying over the next year. “And so they prefer to wait a bit,” he says. “Lack of selling is good in that regard because they’re not anxious.”
It depends a lot on the industry. Silverman points to insider buying at home improvement and building materials companies such as
Sherwin-Williams
,
Mohawk industries
,
American wood brand
,
and
AZEK
.
But
Home deposit
,
Floor and decor
,
and
Trex
experienced declines over several months. “They don’t want to sell at current valuations,” he says. “They are ready to wait.”
On the other hand, Silverman sees insider selling of oil and gas stocks as a negative signal. While oil executives struggled to time their buying, they managed to call a leading oil market and sell, he says.
Last week
Resumed by Tweet
Elon Musk refused
Twitter
it is
bid for a seat on the board, then launched a hostile bid for $43 billion; Twitter adopted a poison pill to deter Musk. Fed officials — eight in all — rushed to talk rates. The consumer price index came in at 8.5%, although there were signs of a slowdown in the core CPI, mainly due to lower used car prices. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, however, rose to 2.83%, a pandemic-era high. The markets are closed on Good Friday. the
Dow Jones Industrial Average
lost 0.8%, to 34,451.23 over the week; the
S&P500
fell 2.1% to 4392.59; and the
Nasdaq Compound
plunged 2.6%, to 13,351.08.
Earnings from big banks
JPMorgan Chase
kicked off the first-quarter earnings season with earnings down 42% on lower investment banking fees.
black rock
met expectations.
Citigroup
,
Goldman Sachs
,
and
Morgan Stanley
beat, but with lower profits, and
Wells Fargo
soufflé.
Delta Airlines
also beaten.
The war is heading east
Russia refocused its attention on Donbass, appointing General Aleksandr Dvornikov to lead its battered, though still formidable, invasion force. Dvornikov has been accused of brutality against civilians during the Syrian Civil War. Ukrainian President Zelensky again warned of the possibility of chemical warfare, as Ukraine’s military said the Russians were close to completing their redeployment in the east. Ukraine sank the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in a missile attack. Meanwhile, President Biden has called Russian actions in Ukraine a genocide, and Finland and Sweden have moved closer to NATO membership.
Macron versus Le Pen
In France, President Emmanuel Macron narrowly won the first round of the French presidential election and now faces right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen in the second.
The subway attack
Some 23 people were injured – 10 were shot – after a gunman set off smoke bombs and fired into a subway train in Brooklyn. After a manhunt, officers arrested a suspect, Frank James, who, among other things, called a hotline to find out his whereabouts.
convicted banker
A Brooklyn jury has convicted former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng of conspiracy to launder money and bribe officials in connection with the looting of a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB. Goldman raised $6.5 billion in bond issues in 2012 and 2013 for 1MDB, much of which was later diverted.
Annals of Deal Making
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo said it would pay $6.9 billion for the cybersecurity firm
SailPoint Technologies
,
a premium of 31.5%. Thoma Bravo held a stake in SailPoint before the company went public in 2017… Epic Games, the creator of fortnite, secured $2 billion in funding from
sony
and Legos. The deal values Epic at $31.5 billion… Biotech
Therapeutic Halozyme
agreed to purchase a specialty pharmaceutical company
Antares Pharma
for about 960 million dollars…
black stone
is backing the Benetton family in a $20.7 billion takeover of infrastructure company Atlantia.
Write to Connor Smith at [email protected]
