Insider Trades: Five stocks insiders are buying and selling

A summary of the top director transactions from 22 December to 28 December 2022. You can find out more about why director transactions are a big deal here.

Top 10 insider moves by value

Interesting observations

Core Lithium: selling 6 cent options

To add some more perspective, a combined 10 million options have been exercised by Core Lithium directors since mid November. The exercise price was just 6 cents – a return of around 1,560% compared to today's share price.

Source: Market Index

After making such an outsized return on investment, it would make sense to take a few chips off the table. But the timing couldn't come worse amid:

• a selloff among lithium stocks. Core Lithium is down almost -50% from its 14 November high of $1.875.

• broader market weakness. The S&P 500 finished the year down -19.4%, its worst calendar year since 2008.

• weakness in EV sales. Tesla's Q4 vehicle deliveries of 405,278 missed analyst expectations of 427,000. Production outpaced deliveries by 8.5%, the highest since the first quarter of 2020.

Dip buying: MFF Investments, City Chic, Collins Food

The 12-month performance of these three stocks vary from bad to abysmal.

• MFF Capital: -21.6%

• Collins Food: -47.1%

• City Chic -91.6%

Collins Food shares tanked -23.8% on 29 November after posting half-year revenue growth of 15% but net profit growth of -14.2%. Management warned that "significant inflationary headwinds are continuing in both markets, with margin pressure expected to remain for the balance of FY23."

City Chic has experienced several >10% dips throughout the year amid inventory issues, underwhelming sales growth and high cash burn. The stock fell -31.4% after a trading update on 20 December 2022, where management said they plan to ramp up promotional activity to drive demand resulting in further gross margin compression.

Meteoric Resources: loading up the rip

Meteoric Resource shares rallied 264% between 16 December 2022 and 3 January 2023. This was after the company announced the acquisition of a 'potential world class ionic clay rare earths project' in Brazil.

What's interesting is that the director decided to buy more shares during the run. At the 4 cent buy price, the stock had already rallied around 170% since the acquisition.

But at today's price of 5.6 cents, the same position is up a cool 30%.

Meteoric Resources (Source: TradingView)