We recently compiled a list of the 10 Stocks With At Least $30 Million In Insider Spending Recently. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Verde Clean Fuels, Inc. (NASDAQ:VGAS) stands against the other stocks. We previously covered 10 stocks with at least $20 million in insider spending recently.

Trump administration’s tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico, as well as additional duties on China, took effect yesterday. As expected, the stock market reacted immediately. The technology index fell 1.2%, hitting its lowest point in almost four months, wiping out post-election gains, while blue-chip companies declined 1.5% or 650 points.

“Tariffs of these magnitude will drive both Canada and Mexico into a recession,” JP Morgan analysts wrote in their daily Tuesday note, writes The Street. Analysts added that higher costs and supply-chain disruptions will affect U.S. growth and domestic stocks. The tariffs could impact $2.2 trillion of global trade and provoke economic slowdowns in the U.S.

Many analysts have downgraded their U.S. stock projections, believing that strong earnings in 2025 may be more challenging. The broader market index is expected to finish the year around 9% higher than in 2024, but that’s still lower than the early January forecast of 12.2%.

The biggest potential positive factor, many experts are banking on, is a productivity boost from AI and expected lower interest rates. Morgan Stanley’s Andrew Slimmon suggests that the adoption of AI could lead to a productivity boom, similar to what happened with the Internet in the late 1990s.

With market fluctuations and uncertainty at play, insider trading draws attention. Executives and insiders, who possess valuable insights into company strategies, plans, and future moves, may engage in trades worth examining. For example, when a CEO or CFO invests their own money in company stock, it can signal strong confidence in the company’s potential.

Insider buying and selling can be influenced by a range of factors, so these actions should be evaluated in the broader context of a company’s financial health, industry trends, and overall market conditions. This underscores the importance of thorough research before making any investment. While insider trading activity can provide useful insights into a company’s potential, it should be considered alongside other key factors to help investors make well-informed decisions.

Today, we’ll focus on stocks with at least $30 million in insider spending. We used Insider Monkey’s stock screener to find stocks where at least one insider purchase in the last five months was worth $30 million or more. While the total value of all insider purchases could be higher, we only looked at those over $30 million. Since more than 10 stocks met these criteria, we chose the top 10 with the largest insider purchases above $30 million.

Our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds, focusing on insider trading and stock picks from hedge fund investor newsletters and conferences. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here).

For each stock, we provide details on the highest individual purchase, the number of insider purchases higher than $30 million over the last three months and the company’s current market capitalization. Let’s take a look at 10 stocks with at least $30 million in insider spending recently.

Verde Clean Fuels, Inc. (NASDAQ:VGAS)

Highest Individual Purchase: $50,000,000.00

Number of Purchases Above $30 million: 1

Market Capitalization: $171.52 million

We begin this list of stock with hefty insider spending recently with a renewable gasoline technology company with projects in North America, Verde Clean Fuels, Inc. (NASDAQ:VGAS). The Houston, Texas-based company is engaged in the deployment of its original and proprietary liquid fuels processing technology through the development of commercial production plants. Verde’s syngas-to-gasoline plus process converts syngas, derived from diverse feedstocks into fully finished liquid fuels that require no additional refining.

On January 29, one insider – Cottonmouth Ventures, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Diamondback Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:FANG), purchased $50 million worth of Verde Clean Fuels shares at a price of $4 per share. With this purchase of 12.5 million shares, Cottonmouth Ventures increased its holdings to 14.5 million shares.

“This investment is consistent with our commitment to efficiency and sustainability in oil and gas operations,” stated Mr. Dossey, vice president of marketing at Diamondback. “Verde’s technology provides an exciting opportunity to convert associated natural gas from our Permian Basin operations into gasoline, as well as an anticipated high value outlet for a volume of our natural gas with the added potential benefit of flare mitigation and production of a lower carbon fuel.”

Currently, the stock is trading at $3.85 per share, having lost 5.41% since the beginning of the year. Over the past 12 months, Verde Clean Fuels shares dropped 18.60%.

For the quarter ended September 30, 2024, Verde Clean Fuels, Inc. (NASDAQ:VGAS) reported a net loss of $2.5 million, which compares to a net loss of $2.6 million in the same period of 2023. The company’s net loss for the quarter was primarily attributable to ongoing and general and administrative expenses. As of September 30, 2024, the company had cash and cash equivalents of $21.7 million and no debt.

Analyst coverage on Verde Clean Fuels is currently limited, however, the stock is also one of 10 stocks insiders spent the most money on recently.

Overall VGAS ranks 10th on our list of the stocks with at least $30 million in insider spending recently. While we acknowledge the potential of VGAS as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than VGAS but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and Complete List of 59 AI Companies Under $2 Billion in Market Cap

Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.