Major U.S. stock market gauges climbed again on Thursday and set fresh record highs, thanks to a month-long rally after the presidential election of Donald Trump. As corporate insiders usually follow the pattern of buying low and selling high, the dollar volume of insider buying has seemingly slowed down quite noticeably. The insiders’ contrarian approach to investing is probably what makes insider trading metrics worthwhile to the investment community.
However, examining all insider purchases and sales reported with the SEC requires intensive work considering the immense number of companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, and here is where Insider Monkey comes in. Our insider trading articles cover the most noteworthy insider purchases and sales reported with the SEC each trading session – articles investors could use to find possible investment opportunities. Nonetheless, investors should not blindly mimic each insider transaction discussed in our articles or in any other articles out there. Instead, investors should incorporate insider metrics as part of a broader stock selection and analysis process, which would likely reduce the odds of making poor investment decisions. That being said, the following article will discuss several noteworthy insider transactions reported with the SEC on Thursday.
We follow over 700 hedge funds and other institutional investors and by analyzing their quarterly 13F filings, we identify stocks that they are collectively bullish on and develop investment strategies based on this data. One strategy that outperformed the market over the last year involves selecting the 100 best-performing funds and identifying the 30 mid-cap stocks that they are collectively the most bullish on. Over the past year, this strategy generated returns of 18%, topping the 8% gain registered by S&P 500 ETFs.
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Board Member of Expanding Financial Holding Company Buys Shares Near 52-Week Highs
Let’s kick off our discussion by looking at some fresh insider buying at First Mid-Illinois Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:FMBH). Board member Gary W. Melvin snatched up 19,869 shares on Thursday at a price tag of $32.08 each. Following the recent purchase, Mr. Melvin currently owns an aggregate of 638,624 shares.
The shares of the financial holding company are trading near their 52-week high of $33.85, after gaining an impressive 29% thus far in 2016. This surely doesn’t explain the insider purchase discussed above. In early September, First Mid-Illinois Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:FMBH) completed its acquisition of First Clover Leaf Financial Corp., which added approximately $537 million in deposits and $450 million in performing loans. With the completion of the acquisition, First Mid currently has 53 banking centers and 66 ATMs across Illinois and Missouri. Under the terms of the transaction, shareholders of Clover received $12.87 in cash or 0.495 of a share of First Mid common stock. Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies LLC added a 62,300-share stake in First Mid-Illinois Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:FMBH) to its portfolio during the third quarter.
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The next two pages of this insider trading article will discuss fresh insider selling observed at four other companies.
