Five Stocks Insiders Have Bought: Occidental, Fastenal, and More

The CEO of Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRIS), Daniel Passeri, bought 25,000 shares on December 6^th at an average price of $3.03 per share. Curis is a $250 million market cap cancer drug discovery company (an average of 320,000 shares are traded daily, and the current stock price is about $3.15, creating about $1 million in daily dollar volume). The stock is down 22%, and analysts expect Curis to be unprofitable both this year and next year. There’s also considerable short interest, but apparently the company’s CEO thinks the stock has been too beaten down by the market and his buy is worth noting.

J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:JBHT) had a family trust connected to one of its Board members buy 2,600 shares of the company’s stock at just under $59 per share. J.B. Hunt has an advantage over other companies in the trucking industry in that it has a very strong intermodal business, which has boosted its growth rate- earnings last quarter were up 14% from a year ago. Billionaire Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital had initiated a position of 3.8 million shares during the third quarter (check out Mandel’s stock picks). Still, the stock is valued at 23 times trailing earnings, considerably higher than many other trucking companies. When we had looked at J.B. Hunt (read our analysis of the company), we had found peers Swift Transportation Co (NYSE:SWFT) and Old Dominion Freight Line (NASDAQ:ODFL) to be more intriguing value prospects.

Gary Wescombe, who sits on the Board of Directors at Healthcare Trust of America Inc (NYSE:HTA), bought 20,000 shares at an average price of $10.10 per share. Healthcare Trust of America is a real estate investment trust which invests in healthcare-related real estate (such as office buildings), and like many other REITs pays a substantial dividend yield. The $2.1 billion market cap company went public in June and is about flat since that time.