Insider Selling Soars In “Cautionary Sign” To Market

One month ago, when Apple finally crossed above $1 trillion in market cap, Goldman’s chief equity strategist David Kostin said that investors had been focusing on the “wrong $1 trillion question”, adding that the correct question was: what amount of buyback will companies authorize in 2018? The reason was that according to the latest estimate from Goldman’s buyback desk, stock buyback authorizations in 2018 had increased to a record $1.0 trillion – a result of tax reform and strong cash flow growth – a 46% rise from last year.

The upward revision was warranted: according to TrimTabs calculations, buyback announcements swelled to a record $436.6 billion in the second quarter, smashing the previous record of $242.1 billion set just one quarter earlier, in Q1. Combined, this meant that buybacks in the first half totaled a ridiculous $680 billion which annualized amounted to a staggering $1.35 trillion, indicating that Goldman’s revised estimate may in fact be conservative.

Furthermore, with many strategists warning that August could be a volatile month, Goldman remained optimistic noting that “August is the most popular month for repurchase executions, accounting for 13% of annual activity”, implying that a solid buyback bid would support the market in a worst case scenario which never materialized as the S&P rose to a fresh all time high at the end of the month.

Based on the Goldman data and estimates, it is probably safe to say that August was one of the all-time record months in terms of buyback activity. That companies would be scrambling to repurchase their stock last month was not lost on one particular group of investors: the corporate insiders of the companies buying back their own stocks.

According to data compiled by TrimTabs, insider selling reached $450 million daily in August, the highest level this year; on a monthly basis, insiders sold more than $10 billion of their stock, the most of any month this year and near the most on record.