Top Insider Sales for October 11 Included Primerica and Google

by Jonathan Moreland, Minyanville Staff Writer

In a victory for common sense, the trading behavior of company executives, directors, and large shareholders in the stocks of firms they're registered "insiders" at have been proven profitable to monitor by both academic studies and (more importantly) the experience of your fellow professional investors.

Below are lists of the top 10 mainly open-market insider purchases and sales filed at the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, October 11, 2012 as ranked by dollar value.

Please note, however, that these are factual lists, not buy and sell recommendations. Dollar value is only one metric to assess the importance of an insider transaction, and, frankly, often not even the most important metric that determines if an insider transaction is significant.

Warburg Pincus unloaded $59.9 million worth of insurance carrier Primerica (NYSE:PRI) stock in the names of managing directors Michael Martin and Daniel Zilberman, according to forms filed with the SEC on October 11. The deal was done off the open market as Primerica had previously agreed to repurchase the shares owned by the Warburg Pincus Private Equity X fund. Despite the repurchase, Warburg Pincus still owns 15% of Primerica's common stock with warrants to purchase a further 5-6%.

In a more routine transaction, Larry Page continued selling Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) stock through an automatic sales (Rule 10b5-1) program. 

FPR Partners made an open market buy of ViaSat (NASDAQ:VSAT), which made the private investment partnership an 11.6% beneficial owner in the communications equipment company. Hany Nada, co-founder of GGV Capital and a director of Glu Mobile (NASAQ:GLUU), made a $9.9 million purchase in the game developer. The purchase was part of an automatic buy (Rule 10b5-1) program on behalf of two GGV funds, which was entered into in February of this year.

At InsiderInsights.com, we find new investment ideas just about every day using these and more intricate insider screens to determine where we should focus our subsequent fundamental and technical analysis. And while stocks don't (or shouldn't) move up or down based on insider activity alone, insiders tend to be good indicators of when real stock-moving events like earnings surprises, corporate actions, and new products may be in the offing.