With Homebuilders Stocks Battered, Insiders Still Hold on to Their Shares
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Homebuilders stocks have been battered the last 6 month with many being down 25–50 percent. When the internet bubble occurred, insiders were selling their shares as quickly as they could. With the homebuilder executives the sales have not occurred. With the exception of one sale that was planned in advance by the Ryland Group CEO, there has been no insider trading of the stocks by any building company executive.
That leads me to the assumption that the downturn is not projected to be as deep and long as expected, or that the industry has a collective head in the sand mentality.
Jonathan Moreland, director of research at InsiderInsights.com, a service that tracks insider stock activity, said the lack of sales could be a sign that the executives believe the downturn will be relatively short-lived.
“Everyone likes to compare the homebuilding to the Internet bubble,” said Moreland. “But this is unlike that bubble, where in 2001 and 2002, I was seeing continued massive insider selling at a lot of these Internet companies, even when their stocks were 40, 50, even 60 percent off their highs.”
Still Moreland said it’s too soon to say that homebuilder executives have confidence that their stocks, and the home-building market, have bottomed out.
“You’re not going to get me to call a bottom or read an insider’s mind,” he said. “This definitely tells me insiders are relative more bullish than a lot of investors in these stocks. But that being said, we’re not seeing any buying. If they really wanted to show the faith, they could be buying shares.” via CNN Money

