Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (HTZ) Registers Eye-Catching Insider Buying, Massive Insider Sale at Best Buy Co Inc. (BBY), Plus Three Other Companies with Notable Insider Trading Activity

U.S. equities finished the week on a negative note on Friday, as investors lowered meaningfully their expectations for a rate hike this summer after the release of a weaker-than-expected jobs report. The U.S. employers added 38,000 jobs last month, which represents the weakest performance in more than five years. Meanwhile, last week’s dollar volume of insider buying nearly doubled week-over-week, whereas the volume of insider selling nearly halved relative to the volume registered in the previous week. It’s worth pointing out that the insider buying recorded this May has been higher than the buying volume registered in the same month of the past three years or so. This is great news for the investment community, so, based on historical patterns, one may expect U.S. equities to go higher in the weeks and months ahead. Insider Monkey processed numerous Form 4 filings submitted with the SEC on Friday and picked five companies with eye-catching insider trading activity.

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Academic research has shown that certain insider purchases historically outperformed the market by an average of seven percentage points per year. This effect is more pronounced in small-cap stocks. Another exception is the small-cap stock picks of hedge funds. Our research has shown that imitating the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds outperformed the market by nearly a percentage point per month between 1999 and 2012 (read more details here).

Car Rental Giant Witnesses Two Executives Purchase Shares

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTZ) has seen two executives purchase shares since the beginning of June. To start with, Tyler A. Best, Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President, purchased 45,000 shares on Thursday at a price of $10.02 per share, boosting his overall holding to 72,450 shares. Joining Mr. Best was Alexandria Panot Marren, Executive Vice President of North American Rental Car Operations, who bought 10,000 shares on Wednesday at a weighted average price of $9.90. Ms. Marren currently owns 50,282 shares of Hertz Global, which include 40,282 restricted stock units.

The car rental giant has seen its market value decline by 29% since the beginning of the year. Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTZ)’s disappointing performance in recent months has been impacted by a decline in rental prices across the globe. The company’s revenues for the first three months of 2016 were $2.31 billion, down from $2.45 billion recorded a year ago mainly due to a decrease in revenues of $114 million in the U.S. Car Rental segment. As mentioned, the decrease in U.S. car rental revenues was mainly driven by lower rental rates. Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital LP was the owner of 63.71 million shares of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. (NYSE:HTZ) at the end of March.

Let’s head to the next pages of this insider trading article, where we will discuss several noteworthy insider trading transactions recorded at four other companies.