Opko Health Inc. (OPK), Pacific DataVision, Inc. (PDVW), LGI Homes Inc (LGIH): Three Stocks with Large Insider Purchases

LGI Homes Inc (NASDAQ:LGIH), a $308 million residential building company saw several insiders acquire shares in the last couple of days. The largest amount was purchased by Duncan Gage, a director of the company, who disclosed the acquisition of nearly 27,000 shares on March 18 and 19. Following the transactions, Mr. Gage holds directly 33,785 shares and around 17,000 shares via his and his spouse’s retirement plans. Aside from Mr. Gage, two other directors of LGI Homes Inc (NASDAQ:LGIH), Christopher Sansbury and Ryan Edone, acquired 3,000 shares and 4,095 shares respectively on March 18. Following the purchase of those additional shares, Mr. Sansbury holds some 178,600 shares directly and 23,700 shares indirectly, while Mr. Edone owns 15,000 shares directly and 7,500 shares indirectly. Among the funds that we track, Geoffrey Raynor’s Q Investments (Specter Holdings) is the largest shareholder of LGI Homes Inc (NASDAQ:LGIH), owning 717,200 shares as of the end of 2014, up by 106% on the quarter. All insiders bought shares after the company reported its financial results for 2014, with revenue growing to $383 million from $163 million a year earlier and earnings per share advancing to $1.37 from $1.08.

In some cases, following the activity of insiders can provide smaller investors with an edge that could allow them to beat the market. Moreover, a good strategy is to combine insider activity with the sentiment of hedge funds regarding a particular company, especially if it is a small-cap stock. Our strategy based on the 15 most popular small-cap stocks among over 700 hedge funds returned roughly 132% between mid-2012 and March 2015. In comparison the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) gained only around 53% during that period. Moreover, our back tests also showed that a portfolio that immitates 15 most popular small-cap stocks among hedge funds outperformed the market by an average of 1.0 percentage point per month between 1999 and 2012.

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