For all the analysts and pundits in the financial media, there is still no better judge of a company's health and future prospects than the owners and executives of those companies themselves, along with major institutional shareholders.

That's why insider buying and selling is a critical piece of data that is monitored by people who invest for a living.

As part of our continuing efforts here at The Tycoon Report to level the playing field between individual investors and the fat cats on Wall Street, we're keeping you informed -- on a daily basis and at no cost whatsoever -- of the most significant insider buying and selling.

Below is a weekly re-cap of the past week's activity of important insider buys and sells. We aim to publish this re-cap every Monday, and it can be accessed in your e-mail issues or on the Tycoon Report Web site.

Very important note:  While these re-caps are available on the Tycoon Report Web site, if you want the most timely information we provide on insider buying and selling, be sure to read the e-mail issues that we send each weekday morning.
 

 

 

BUYS

MannKind (MNKD)

Chairman & CEO Alfred E. Mann BOUGHT $8.1 million in shares. View details.


SELLS

Activision (ATVI)

Director Robert J. Morgado SOLD $2.3 million in options. View details.

President & CEO Robert A. Kotick SOLD $24.8 million in options. View details.

Director Brian G. Kelly SOLD $18.6 million in options.  View details.


Beacon Roofing Supply Inc.  (BECN)

Chairman &  CEO Robert R. Buck SOLD $1.5 million in shares. View details.


Boston Scientific (BSX)

President and CEO John Raymond Elliott BOUGHT  $1.1 million in shares. View details.


City National Corp. (CYN)

Chairman of the Board Bram Goldsmith SOLD  $37.5 million in shares. View details.


EMC Corp. (EMC)

Chairman, President and CEO Joseph M. Tucci SOLD  $3.8 million in options. View details.


Energizer Holdings Inc.  (ENR)

CEO Ward M. Kline SOLD $2.7 million in options. View details.


EnerNOC Inc.  (ENOC)

Chairman & CEO Timothy G. Healy SOLD  $2.1 million in shares. View details.


Marriott International Inc.  (MAR)

Director John W. Marriott III SOLD $18.7 million in shares. View details.


New Jersey Resources Corp.  (NJR)

Senior V.P. & CFO Glenn C. Lockwood SOLD  $1.6 million in options. View details.


PepsiCo (PEP)

Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo Intl. Michael D. White SOLD  $6.2 million in options. View details.

CEO, PepsiCo John C. Compton SOLD $7.2 million in options. View details.


Ross Stores Inc.  (ROST)

Vice Chairman, Pres. & CEO Michael Balmuth SOLD  $4.3 million in options. View details.


Sherwin-Williams Co.  (SHW)

Sr. VP-Finance and CFO Sean P. Hennessy SOLD $2.6 million in options. View details.


Sigma-Aldrich Corp.  (SIAL)

President, SAFC  Frank Wicks SOLD  $1 million in options. View details.


STEC Inc.  (STEC)

CEO Manouch Moshayedi SOLD $133.9 million in shares. View details.


VCA Antech Inc.  (WOOF)

CFO, VP & Secretary Tomas W. Fuller SOLD $4.6 million in options. View details.

CEO, President & Chairman Robert L. Antin SOLD $5.3 million in options. View details.


Valmont Industries Inc.  (VMI)

Chairman & CEO Mogens C. Bay SOLD $4.2 million in shares. View details.

Senior V.P. & CFO Terry McClain SOLD $1.7 million in shares.  View details.






Tycoon Staff
Chief Investment Officer
<>






TUESDAY, AUG. 18

8:30 a.m. Housing Starts and Building Permits

    * Importance (A-F): This release merits a B-.
    * Source: The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce
    * Release Time: 8:30 a.m. Eastern around the 16th of the month (data for one month prior).
    * Raw Data Available At: http://www.census.gov/const/www/newresconstindex.html

Housing Starts are a measure of the number of residential units on which construction is begun each month. A start in construction is defined as the beginning of excavation of the foundation for the building and is comprised primarily of residential housing.

Building permits are permits taken out in order to allow excavation. An increase in building permits and starts usually occurs a few months after a reduction in mortgage rates. Permits lead starts, but permits are not required in all regions of the country, and the level of permits therefore tends to be less than the level of starts over time.

Highlights

    * Starts for the June period rose 3.6% from May to an annualized rate of 582,000 (consensus 530,000) while permits increased 3.0% to an annualized rate of 563,000 (consensus 524,000).  Housing starts for May were also revised up to 562,000 from an originally reported 532,000.

    * The June number brought the Q2 average to 541,000 versus the first quarter average of 528,000, so this report can be construed as a positive factor when contemplating Q2 GDP estimates.

Key Factors

    * It's a real stretch to call the June report a strong report when you stop to consider that starts were running at nearly a 1.08 million annualized rate in the year-ago period.

    * An increased level of starts isn't exactly what the housing market needs given the excess supply of existing homes for sale.  That consideration is perhaps why the market had a fairly muted initial response to this better-than-expected economic news.

Big Picture

    * Housing starts are at extremely low levels and the outlook is not likely to improve anytime soon due to high levels of inventories of unsold new homes.  An uptrend in construction will require an improvement in employment and income, and then take some time as inventories need to be reduced.  Government action to boost mortgage lending may also help, and starts might stabilize in the second half of the year.


8:30 a.m. PPI: Producer Price Index

    * Importance (A-F): This release merits a B-.
    * Source: Bureau of Labor statistics, U.S. Department of Labor.
    * Release Time: Around the 11th of each month at 8:30 a.m. Eastern for the prior month.
    * Raw Data Available At: http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/ppi.toc.htm

The Producer Price Index measures prices of goods at the wholesale level. There are three broad subcategories within PPI: crude, intermediate and finished.

The market tracks the finished goods index most closely, as it represents prices for goods that are ready for sale to the end user. Goods prices at the crude and intermediate stages of production often provide an indication of coming (dis)inflationary pressures, but the closer you get to crude goods, the more that these prices track commodity prices which are already available in traded indexes such as the CRB (Commodity Research Bureau).

At all stages of production, the market places more emphasis on the index excluding food and energy, referred to as the core rate. Food and energy prices tend to be quite volatile and obscure trends in the underlying inflation rate.

Highlights

    * Total PPI increased 1.8% in June (consensus 0.9%), driven by a 1.1% increase in food prices and a 6.6% jump in energy prices.

    * Core PPI, which excludes food and energy, was up 0.5%.  That was higher than an expected 0.1% increase.

Key Factors

    * This PPI report won't sit well for inflation hawks, who will take added notice of the 1.9% increase and the 4.6% increase in the indexes for intermediate goods and crude goods, respectively, that will create concerns about pipeline pressures.

    * Some of that concern about pipeline pricing pressures should be mitigated by the recent pullback in oil prices and the prevalent understanding that pricing power is still weak on account of generally weak end demand.

Big Picture

    * PPI trends were highly volatile in 2008, mirroring the trends in global oil prices.  Falling global commodity prices and weak economic demand will keep inflation in check at the producer level.  If global economies remain weak in 2009, as is widely expected, inflation at the producer level will be insignificant.  There may even be concerns about global deflation.


THURSDAY, AUG. 20

10 a.m. Philadelphia Fed Index

    * Importance (A-F): The Philadelphia Fed Index merits a B.
    * Source: The Philadelphia Federal Reserve bank.
    * Release Time: Third Thursday of the month at 10 a.m. Eastern for the current month.
    * Raw Data Available At: http://www.phil.frb.org

There are many regional manufacturing surveys, and they tend to be ranked in order of timeliness and the importance of the region. The Philadelphia Fed's survey is first each month, actually coming out during the third week of the month for which it is reporting. Several smaller surveys are then released before the Chicago purchasing managers' report on the last day of each month.

These surveys can be of some help in forecasting the National Association of Purchasing Managers data -- particularly the Philadelphia and Chicago surveys, which are more closely watched due to their timeliness and the fact that these regions represent a reasonable cross-section of national manufacturing activities.

Highlights

    * The Philadelphia Fed Index didn't live up to expectations.  A reading of -7.5 was worse than the consensus estimate of -4.8 and down from the June reading of -2.2.  The dividing line for this report between expansion and contraction is zero.

    * Strikingly, the six-month outlook for general business activity dipped to 51.9 from 60.1 in June.

    * New orders (-2.2) edged in the right direction from a -4.8 reading for June, yet they still haven't tipped into an expansion phase.  Shipments, meanwhile, titled back to a contraction reading at -9.5 versus 2.1 in June.

    * The remaining component indexes for July broke down as follows, with the June reading in parentheses: prices paid -3.5 (-13.0); prices received -21.5 (-16.6); unfilled orders -14.6 (-19.6); delivery time -10.3 (-18.9); inventories -15.4 (-15.3); number of employees -25.3 (-21.8); and average workweek -15.5 (-26.6).

Key Factors

    * The July reading for the six-month outlook is still comfortably above the 37.7 six-month average, yet the pullback speaks to the increasing reservations about the pace of recovery in the face of a continued rise in unemployment.

    * Although there was some improvement in some of the component indexes within the report, the one thing that sticks out is that there wasn't a single, positive number among the components.


Source: Briefing.com