Insider Trades: Buying soars at the small end of town but stocks deliver little upside to ASX directors

A summary of interesting small cap directors transactions valued at over $50,000 between 6-14 March.

Small cap director buys

Interesting observations

Lots of buying but little upside

The 20 most recent transactions for the first 10 companies (above) show 114 on-market director buys but only three sells.

Note: Some of these transactions date back to mid 2022 to late 2021. The count does not add up to 200 due to the inclusion of other types of transactions such as participation in share purchase plans, off-market transfers, share issuances etc.

As you can imagine, most of these small cap stocks are down 20-80% from recent highs. This is interesting because studies have shown that insiders buy more when their stocks are perceived as cheap and buy less when they are expensive.

Perhaps the above doesn't really matter in the midst of a bear market and insiders who refuse to believe so will ride their stock all the way down. This has already been the case for quite a few directors/companies including:

• Swoop: Director transactions in late 2022 bought for 40-43 cents, now trading at 27 cents

• Vonex: Several transactions in June 2022 at 72-74 cents, now trading at 5 cents

• Cooper Energy: Directors bought in late 2022 for 24-26 cents, now trading at 16 cents

There are a few companies that have managed to hold up a little better, including Autosports Group (ASG) and Coventry Group (CYG) – both of which are profit generating companies.

Selfwealth: The fundie saga continues

Selfwealth has arguably the most fascinating director transactions history.

Emanuel Datt, the founder of Datt Capital, was assigned as a non-executive director as of 16 February. The announcement noted the fund as the 'largest shareholder of Selfwealth' with a focus on 'emerging companies within the technology and financial sectors'.

Since his assignment as non-executive director, he has made an additional 10 purchases worth a collective $534,912.