Inquiring Minds Want to Know

From CFO.com:

In January, insiders bought a mere $34.1 million of their own companies' stock, little more than a third of the $95 million for December, according to MarketWatch, which cited data from Thomson Financial. The January number was the lowest since July 1993, when insiders bought just $26.3 million, according to MarketWatch. That month, however, insider purchases still accounted for roughly 5.5 percent of all dollars spent on insider-trading activity; in January 2005, purchases accounted for a mere 1.8 percent of the total dollars spent by insiders.

Hmm. So if the company insiders don't have any confidence in their own companies to do well going into the future, why should I or anyone else be buying their shares? More importantly, why is President Bush pushing for a privatization of Social Security where the proceeds are placed in the stock market while the insiders are cashing out? It would seem that the insiders would be buying shares with both hands in their companies and others to position themselves to capitalize on the imminent influx of hundreds of billions of dollars.

One can only speculate on the answer to these questions and since neither the insiders nor the President confide in us all we can do is "follow the money". I suspect the insiders are persuaded that the chances that the stock markets and economy in general are headed for a firestorm are high and the chances of Bush getting his privatization plan through congress are low. Given these probabilities, they don't want to be among the bag holders when the expletive hits the fan...and either should any other thinking person.