Worries about recession reach top managers: insiders sell shares

Frankfurt The past month went down in the history of the Dax as the worst June with a minus of eleven percent. The slowly trickling realization that supply chain problems, gas shortages, inflation and interest rate hikes will hurt corporate earnings prospects is making many institutional and retail investors cautious.

But not only professional investors and private investors are holding back. Germany’s executive and supervisory boards are also becoming skeptical. This is shown by the monthly Handelsblatt evaluation of executives’ trading activities in the shares of their own companies. Insiders sold significantly more shares in June than they had in May, and the volumes of sales rose sharply.

Olaf Stotz, professor at the private university Frankfurt School, finds this surprising. “Typically, insiders use such significant price declines in the broader market as in June to get back in at a lower price,” says the university lecturer, who regularly evaluates the data reported by companies to the financial regulator Bafin for the Handelsblatt.