Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Howard Marks, Highland Capital Management, Putnam Investments, Samsung Hedge Asset Management, Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI), Salesforce.com, Inc. (CRM), and More

AT&T Stock Is Slumping but Director Stephen Luczo Bought Up More (Barron’s)
AT&T stock is underperforming this year even relative to the coronavirus-battered market, but one director just bought a large block of shares of the media and telecom giant. AT&T shares (ticker: T) have lost about a quarter of their value so far this year, compared with a 13% drop in the S&P 500 index, a measure of the broader market. The company was hit with ratings downgrades from Wall Street analysts last month after suspending buybacks of its stock.

Friday 4/24 Insider Buying Report: PNFP, PAAC (Nasdaq.com)
At Pinnacle Financial Partners, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Thursday, Director G. Kennedy Thompson purchased 5,000 shares of PNFP, for a cost of $34.86 each, for a total investment of $174,300. Pinnacle Financial Partners is trading down about 0.5% on the day Friday. Before this latest buy, Thompson purchased PNFP on 2 other occasions during the past year, for a total cost of $399,770 at an average of $49.97 per share. And on Monday, Director Shih-chung Chou bought $120,000 worth of Proficient Alpha Acquisition, buying 600,000 shares at a cost of $0.20 each. This purchase marks the first one filed by Chou in the past year. Proficient Alpha Acquisition is trading up about 0.4% on the day Friday. So far Chou is in the green, up about 5010.0% on their purchase based on today’s trading high of $10.22.

The President & CEO of Darden (NYSE: DRI) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, the President & CEO of Darden (DRI), Eugene Lee, bought shares of DRI for $1.5M. This recent transaction increases Eugene Lee’s holding in the company by 16.91% to a total of $12.11 million. In addition to Eugene Lee, 11 other DRI executives reported Buy trades in the last month. Based on Darden’s latest earnings report for the quarter ending February 29, the company posted quarterly revenue of $2.35 billion and quarterly net profit of $232 million.

Salesforce.com Inc (CRM) Chair of the Board & CEO Marc Benioff Sold $1.5 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
Chair of the Board & CEO of Salesforce.com Inc., Marc Benioff, sold 10,000 shares of CRM on 04/23/2020 at an average price of $153.85 a share. The total sale was $1.5 million. Salesforce.com Inc is a software-as-a-service company that provides enterprise cloud computing solutions, offering social and mobile cloud apps and platform services, as well as professional services to facilitate the adoption of its solutions.