Insiders Snapping Up Motorola, Saratoga Investment and More

Posted Sep 7th 2010 12:00PM by Wade Hansen
Filed under: Motorola (MOT), 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.

Motorola Inc. (MOT) topped the insider-buying charts for the week ending July 9 as insiders snapped up 3,287,570 shares of company stock at a market value of $24,691,651. During the past six months, insiders have increased their overall holdings in the company by -0.01% and now own 0.14% of Motorola stock.

Saratoga Investment Corp. (SAR) was not far behind, with insiders buying 328,947 shares at a market value of $6,217,098. Insiders now own 1.00% 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:

Hain Celestial Group Inc. (HAIN): 264,500 shares at a value of $5,980,738
Valence Technology Inc. (VLNC): 7,247,880 shares at a value of $5,508,389
Consolidated Graphics Inc. (CGX): 145,821 shares at a value of $5,467,047

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 technology sectors look like they have quite a bullish outlook for the future. Last week, insiders bought $10,124,004 worth of shares in the finance sector and $8,589,355 in the technology sector. Here's how the other sectors stacked up last week:

Consumer Nondurables: $8,080,157
Undesignated: $6,638,036
Consumer Services: $6,096,669
Industrial: $5,982,937
Health Care: $4,953,949
Energy: $1,934,635
Transportation: $1,622,409
Media: $1,264,399

Disclosure: Hansen does not own shares of the stocks discussed above. Positions can change without notice.

Tags: cgx, consolidated graphics, featured, hain, hain celestial, mot, motorola, sar, saratoga investment, valence technology, vlnc