Notable Insider Buys In The Past Week: Athenex And Humana

Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.

A beneficial owner added to a stake in a biopharma company last week.

An executive at a health insurance giant bucked a selling trend.

Conventional wisdom says that insiders and 10% owners really only buy shares of a company for one reason — they believe the stock price will rise and they want to profit. So insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, particularly with markets near all-time highs.

Athenex

An Athenex Inc ATNX 10% owner returned to the buy window this past week. The life-sciences-focused investment manager Perceptive Advisors picked up more than 226,900 more shares of this cancer-focused biopharmaceutical company at $13.08 to $14.63 each. That totaled over $3.25 million. That beneficial owner and the company's chief financial officer also bought shares in the prior week.

Athenex recently released Phase 3 data for its oraxol in metastatic breast cancer. The stock closed most recently at $15.28 a share, so the latest purchases appear to be well-timed. The shares are more than 8% higher in the past week. Analysts anticipate the share price will go to $27.64.

Humana

The chief digital health and analytics officer at Humana Inc HUM purchased 750 shares of this Louisville-based health insurance giant on Christmas Eve. At an average of $368.40 per share, the stock buy totaled nearly $276,300. Note that several executives and other insiders were selling shares earlier in the month.

Humana has been one of the most overbought stocks in the S&P 500. Shares were last seen trading at $371 a share (just above the mentioned purchase price), after creeping up fractionally in the past week. The 52-week high of $372.92 was seen on Friday, and the consensus analyst recommendation is to buy the shares.

See also: Travis Kalanick Is Leaving Uber's Board: Experts On Why, What's Next

Note that there was some recent insider buying at Enterprise Products Partners L.P. EPD and Heico Corp HEI as well.

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

Keep up with all the latest breaking news and trading ideas by following Benzinga on Twitter.