We don't usually assign much importance to director buys but Holy cow!
In order of significance the generally accepted pecking order is: CFO buys at the top of the heap followed by CEO's, other C-suite (oddly enough sales/marketing VP's are a decent indicator) and finally directors with a slight shading toward longer term directors.
From Barron's Weekday Trader:
BlackRock Director Makes Massive $94 Million Purchase
The staggering bet is "one of the largest insider buys by an individual across the entire market" in the past decade.
In one of the largest insider purchases in the past decade, a director of BlackRock (ticker: BLK), James Grosfeld, purchased nearly 500,000 shares of the asset manager for $94 million in a series of transactions in the past month.
Following the purchases, Grosfeld holds just over 700,000 BlackRock shares worth $130 million at the current share price of $186.
Grosfeld, 75, declined to comment, but he evidently views BlackRock shares as undervalued. He may see what Barron's saw in a favorable profile of BlackRock last month (see Feature, "Solid as a Rock," Oct. 13), namely that BlackRock is one of the best-positioned asset managers with shares that have lagged those of peers this year and trade at a discount to many in the industry. Grosfeld is a former CEO of Pulte Homes and has been a BlackRock director since 1999.
"A long-time director of the asset-management giant transacted a massive purchase, registering as one of the largest insider buys by an individual across the entire market over the last nine-plus years," wrote Ben Silverman of InsiderScore, a research firm based in Princeton N.J. that tracks insider transactions. Silverman added that it's very unusual to see such a large purchase from any insider, especially a director, as opposed to a CEO or founder. "An insider purchase of this magnitude is compelling and rare," Silverman concluded in a note published in late October.
Grosfeld bought 300,000 shares on Oct. 19 at around $190, paying $57 million and then purchased another 196,000 shares for $37 million from Oct. 24 through Nov. 1 at an average price of about $189 a share. He owns 700,538 shares....MORE
