Executives Are Selling These 3 Stocks; Should Investors be Wary?

Moving on to the second company discussed in this article, NBT Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ:NBTB) witnessed two executives sell shares last week. Executive Vice President and President of Commercial Banking Jeffrey M. Levy unloaded 2,086 shares on Wednesday at a weighted average price of $26.82, cutting his overall holding to 41,545 shares. President of Retail Banking David E. Raven sold 5,860 shares on the same day, at prices ranging from $26.45 per share to $26.99 per share, and currently owns 26,193 shares.

The financial holding company that serves as a community-oriented financial institution has experienced share gains of 6% over the past year, despite embarking on a steep downtrend since the beginning of December. The company’s net income for the first nine months of 2015 added up to $57.3 million, compared to $56.6 million reported for the nine-month period of 2014. Even so, NBT Bancorp’s net interest margin for the third quarter of 2015 compressed year-over-year to 3.48% from 3.61%. However, one might expect this interest margin to expand in the future, considering the rising interest rate environment. Most importantly, the company’s organic loan growth for the first nine months of 2015 reached 6.6%, which is a promising indicator for the bank. A mere five hedge funds from our extensive database owned the stock at the end of the third quarter. Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management was one of them, but cut its position in NBT Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ:NBTB) by 12% during the third quarter to approximately 207,000 shares.