Insiders Snapping Up American Superconductor, Mediamind and More

Posted Aug 30th 2010 12:30PM by Wade Hansen
Filed under: Insiders, Stocks to Buy

If you are looking for clues telling you which stocks have a good chance of increasing in value, you might want consider watching what insiders are doing. After all, talk is cheap, but when insiders put their own money on the line, you should sit up and take note.

American Superconductor Corp (AMSC) topped the insider-buying charts for the week ending July 9th as insiders snapped up 200,000 shares of company stock at a market value of $5,657,600. During the past six months, insiders have increased their overall holdings in the company by 27.24% and now own 10.05% of AMSC stock.

Mediamind Technologies Inc (MDMD) was not far behind, with insiders buying 380,200 shares at a market value of $4,372,302. Insiders now own 0.00% of the company's stock after decreasing their overall holdings by 0.00% during the past six months.

Rounding out the top five companies with strong insider buying last week are:

America's Car Mart Inc (CRMT) - 152,200 shares at a value of $3,363,668
Tower Financial Corp (TOFC) - 348,818 shares at a value of $2,214,994
Overseas Shipholding Group Inc (OSG) - 44,300 shares at a value of $1,461,132

I like to look at insider buying more than insider selling because there is only one reason insiders buy shares of a company -- they believe the stock price is going to move higher and they want to profit from it. On the other hand, there are many reasons insiders sell stock -- planned sales, tax-planning purposes and so on -- which makes this data much less reliable as a sentiment indicator.

For a big-picture view, insiders in the finance and industrial sectors look like they have quite a bullish outlook for the future. Last week, insiders bought $10,126,488 worth of shares in the Finance sector and $7,461,422 in the Industrial sector. Here's how the other sectors stacked up last week: