If you want someone to really pay attention to what you are saying, then all you have to do is put your money where your mouth is.
Consider the
CEO of Company X. His stock price is in the proverbial toilet. He can't get a break on
Wall Street, and the problems on
Main Street aren't looking like they're going to do much for his
bottom line, either. No one is too surprised if he sells
shares of his own company's stock.
But what if he starts buying? That's a whole other ball game, isn't it? The executive management and board members know what's really going on and how the company can react to it.
That's the point of monitoring insider transactions.
So today, we're going to look at potentially game-changing companies insiders have been buying.
Using the Bloomberg Professional Service, I performed a special search function to display all insider trades for the past six months with a
market value of more than $1 million. Because stock is often part of an executive's total compensation package, I excluded filings that were made to exercise stock options.
Here are what I believe to be the most illuminating insider trades of true game-changing stocks from the past six months...
1. Amyris (Nasdaq: AMRS)
This is a biofuel company, but that's not the whole story -- not by a long shot. The better description for Amyris is as a "synthetic biology" company. Its scientists use special organisms that are basically little living factories that have been genetically programmed to produce a certain compound. This process leverages the natural abilities of plants to process sugar, and renewable sources of plant sugar is the inevitable future of fuel.
Amyris is a pioneer in this field. The company was founded in 2003 and won grant funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop the underpinning of an anti-malaria drug. The effort was a complete success, and Amyris licensed the technology to drug giant
Sanofi (NYSE: SNY), the largest vaccine maker in the world.
Now the company is setting its sights on biofuel, specifically on generating cellulosic ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane.
What would be perfect here is for me to tell you that this buy was made by a notable energy expert with unassailable credentials.