As the saying goes, there are many possible reasons for an insider to sell a stock, but only one reason to buy -- they expect to make money. So let's look at two noteworthy recent insider buys.
At
Schlumberger
(SLB), a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, Director Lubna S. Olayan bought 5,000 shares of SLB, for a cost of $83.82 each, for a total investment of $419,080. Olayan was up about 3.3% on the buy at the high point of today's trading session, with SLB trading as high as $86.61 at last check today. This purchase marks the first one filed by Olayan in the past year.
And on Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gallagher purchased $350,840 worth of
Genuine Parts
(GPC), purchasing 4,000 shares at a cost of $87.71 each. Before this latest buy, Gallagher bought GPC at 3 other times during the past year, for a total cost of $1.27M at an average of $90.72 per share. Genuine Parts is trading up about 0.8% on the day Thursday.