Clusters of Insider Buying at Battered Retailer of Storage Products and Struggling Trucking Firm, Plus Other Insider Trading

Executives at Goldman Sachs Offload Shares Amid Increased Deregulation Expectations

Two executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) trimmed their equity stakes this week. To start with, President and Co-Chief Operating Officer David M. Solomon discarded 4,165 shares on Tuesday at prices ranging from $240 to $240.21 per share, cutting his direct ownership stake to 177,594 shares. Mr. Solomon offloaded an additional 2,085 shares on the same day, shares held through trusts. Pablo J. Salame, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs Group and Global Co-Head of the Securities Division, discarded 16,185 shares on Tuesday at prices that fell between $240 and $240.46 per share, a sale that reduced his ownership stake to 146,133 shares.

As President Donald Trump plans to kick off the process of undoing parts of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, banks are anticipated to boost dividends and buy back shares. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve is anticipated to keep raising interest rates, with very few banks expected to do better than Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) in this environment according to Barron’s. More importantly, should fiscal stimulus and lower corporate taxes increase economic activity, Goldman Sachs appears well-positioned to benefit from its position as the leading global advisor in M&A. Goldman Sachs shares have gained an impressive 71% in the past year. Edgar Wachenheim’s Greenhaven Associates reported ownership of 3.74 million shares through the current round of 13 filings.

CEO of Electronic Bond Trading Firm Offloads Shares

The man in charge of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) also discarded some shares this week. Chairman and CEO Richard M. McVey, who founded MarketAxess in April 2000, sold 8,636 shares on Tuesday, 506 shares on Wednesday and 9,687 shares on Thursday, at prices ranging from $187.50 to $190.06 per share. After this series of transactions, Mr. McVey currently owns an aggregate of 1.06 million shares.

The shares of the electronic bond trading firm have gained 77% in the past 12 months, which makes the insider selling discussed above a normal occurrence. MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX), the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, recently reported that the monthly trading volume on its platform reached $121.4 billion. The company’s overall trading volume for 2016 totaled $1.3 trillion, up by 33.7% year-over-year. Therefore, should the monthly trading volume for the remaining months of 2017 be in excess of the figure reported for January, MarketAxess will achieve yet another record in annual trading volume. Matthew Tewksbury’s Stevens Capital Management owns 22,364 shares of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:MKTX) as of the end of December.

Disclosure: None