Notable Insider Buys Of The Past Week: JPMorgan, Huntington Ingalls And More

Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.

Some insiders made post-earnings trips to the buy window in the past week.

The financial sector was well-represented in last week's insider buying.

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 during periods of uncertainty.

Insiders continued to take advantage of fallen share prices last week. Here are some of the most noteworthy insider purchases reported in the past week.

JPMorgan

In the wake of its first-quarter report, a director indirectly added 75,000 JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM shares. At a share price of $87.99, that cost the director almost $6.6 million.

The stock ended last week's trading at $95.18 per share, so that director's purchase seems well-timed. The stock is up almost 19% since its year-to-date low in March.

Legg Mason

A beneficial owner of Legg Mason Inc LM bought more than 207,000 shares of this asset manager. At $9.66 per share, that came to about $2 million.

The Baltimore-based firm is being acquired by Franklin Resources, Inc. LM. Its shares inched up about 1% in the past week and closed most recently at $49.55 a share.

KeyCorp

KeyCorp KEY President Christopher Gorman purchased 100,000 shares of this Cleveland-based bank last week at prices ranging from $10.27 to $10.55 apiece. That totaled more than $1.03 million and came in the wake of the first-quarter report.

The stock ended the week changing hands at $10.81, above Gorman's purchase price range. The stock is up about 44% from the year-to-date low in March.

Huntington Ingalls

Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc HII saw a director return and shell out between $190.00 and $192.77 per share for more than 3,600 shares of this military shipbuilder. That cost him about $700,800 and was pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan.

Huntington Ingalls is scheduled to post quarterly results on May 7. The latest close at $195.96 per share was above the director's purchase price range and came after the shares gained more than 20% from the March low.

Ryman Hospitality

Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc RHP CEO Colin Reed picked up 21,900 shares for an average of $27.16 each. That totaled over $594,800 and raised his stake to more than 860,842 shares.

The pandemic has been hard on lodging operators in general, and shares of this real estate investment trust were last seen trading at $27.95, above Reed's purchase price range but down almost 68% year-to-date. The S&P 500 is only about 11% lower in that time.

See also: Charlie Munger Says Berkshire Playing It Safe During Coronavirus; Outcome Of Crisis Could Be 'A Different Kind Of Mess'

In addition, note that there was some amount of insider buying at GameStop Corp. GME, Simply Good Foods Co SMPL and Spirit Realty Capital Inc SRC last week as well.

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

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