insider stock sales highest since 1987

the good thing is that this kind of data is very transparent and almost in real time. whenever a new record is set up and especially whne the last record is almost 20 years old you should be listening........

das gute an diesem datensatz ist das er sehr transparent und in echtzeit berichtet. immer wenn sehr alte rekordstände (hier fast 20 jahre) gebrochen werden sollte man besser genauer hinsehen.....

http://tinyurl.com/wnyhf Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Stock sales by America's corporate chieftains exceeded purchases last month by the widest margin since 1987, suggesting they don't share the confidence of investors who sent the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to a six-year high.

Executives ....in aggregate sold $63.18 of shares for every $1 they bought in November, ....... That's the highest since at least January 1987.

pretty easy to judge this kind of ratio......./ bei diesem verhältnis ziemlich einfach.......

``They're pretty savvy market guys,'' .......... ``They see things are slowing down, and they're like, `Man, I'm taking some money off the table.''' .....

Insiders sold $8.4 billion in shares last month, ....... Buying was almost $133 million, for a sell-buy ratio of 63.18.

That ratio surpassed a previous high of 62.76 reached in July 2005. The S&P 500 declined 2.2 percent from August through October 2005. ........
http://insider.thomsonfn.com/tfn/insider.asp?imodule=mktTearsheet

Some investors say they're unconcerned by the selling.

``Insiders tend to buy when the prices are low and sell when they go up, so it's fairly typical'' to have selling during a rally, ........ ``The issue that you want to be more concerned about is if they are selling while it's going down.''

`Value for Investors'
Still, the overall insider-selling figure last month was the fifth-highest since 1987. Selling peaked at $13.9 billion in March 2000, when the S&P 500 reached its all-time high. The index then fell 5.2 percent in the next two months.

..... ``It's people who are very familiar with their company and their stock, and they are making a statement.''

Data from Thomson Financial also suggest that the outlook for profits is worsening.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson forecast that earnings growth at S&P 500 companies will slow to 9.4 percent in the fourth quarter, ending a 13-quarter streak of expansion above 10 percent. The estimate is down from almost 13 percent at the beginning of October.

Weekly Insider Report
The consistency of the increase in insider selling since June should also be unsettling to investors, ...

Insiders executed 6.34 sales transactions for each purchase transaction in the eight weeks ended Dec. 1, Coleman's calculations from SEC filings show. That's up from 2.45 in the period ended Aug. 4 and above the ratio of 2.25 he considers neutral for the market.

The one-week sell-buy ratio climbed to at least 7-to-1 three times in October and November, compared with a level of 1.68 in the week ended June 16, when the S&P 500 reached its 2006 low.

``In spite of the fact that insiders typically sell into a rising market, these levels of selling are highly unsettling,'' Coleman said from Fairfax County, Virginia.

more on the "surprisingly" good timing from businessweek / mehr zum guten timing von bw

Insiders with a Curious Edge
How corporate executives seem to be violating the spirit, if not the letter, of a rule meant to prevent insider trading http://tinyurl.com/yegyae (long but good read/lang aber gut)!

BusinessWeek found a surprising amount of leeway over preplanned trades. At nearly half the companies examined, sales were concentrated in the months leading up to a stock's peak or just thereafter