Insider Trades: Directors bought and sold these 10 ASX 200 stocks last week

Welcome back to the Insider Trades Series – A summary of on-market ASX 200 director transactions valued at more than $10,000 between 23 and 31 October.

Top ASX 200 Director Trades

Brambles (ASX: BXB) CEO Graham Chipchase has offloaded approximately $1.9 million in the past week. But to add some perspective, he's also exercised about $8.0 million worth of shares as part of his performance share plan. So it's not like he's selling shares out of the blue.

Having said that, Brambles reported its first quarter results on 27 October, which triggered a sharp 5.7% selloff on that day. To recap the results:

• Revenue growth was strong at face value, largely underpinned by strong pricing as opposed to higher volumes

• Group sales up 13% to US$1.64bn

• Brambles acknowledged that the growth was largely attributed to rollover contributions from prior-year pricing initiatives, with group volumes flat and net new business volumes also flat vs year-ago

• Views amongst analysts following the release was mixed, with a few upgrades but more downgrades. The average price target across 15 sell-side analysts fell 4.9% to $15.55

While Chipchase was selling, Non-executive Directors John Mullen, Kendra Banks and Nora Scheinkestel were buying.

Transurban (ASX: TCL) has had a few directors nibble amid recent share price weakness. Higher bond yields (which typically weights on interest rate sensitive sectors like real estate and utilities) has dragged the stock to levels not seen since March 2020.

Whitehaven Coal (ASX: WHC) has also seen a few directors purchase $40,000 to $76,000 sized parcels in the past few weeks. Earlier this week, Bloomberg noted:

"Chinese coal prices are falling as winter nears ... Record domestic production and imports, and an increasing contribution from renewables, have put the country in a much better place to weather rising consumption during the peak demand period for heating."