Insiders are Crazy About These 5 Stocks

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Synageva Biopharma Corp (NASDAQ:GEVA), which is a development stage biotechnology company, is another stock that multiple insiders have been buying in the last month. One Board member’s trust recently bought about 21,000 shares at an average price of $47.53 per share- roughly $1 million in stock. Synageva’s chief drug candidate is a treatment for lysosomal acid lipase deficiency. It is another popular short target with 15% of shares held short, and as a development stage company the Street does not expect it to turn a profit this year.

Tom Gayner, the chief investment officer at Markel Corporation (NYSE:MKL), and other insiders have been buying the stock; while these insider buys have only been between 100 and 1,000 shares, the per share price of $475 makes even a small number of shares a significant insider purchase. Markel is an insurance company which invests its assets in the market under the direction of Gayner and his team. It is currently valued at a small premium to book value and at 23 times analyst consensus for 2013. Markel is in the process of acquiring fellow insurance company Alterra Capital Holdings.

Three insiders have bought shares of biotech company Omeros Corporation (NASDAQ:OMER) since the beginning of the year, though in two cases the purchases have been relatively small. Omeros is developing treatments for conditions affecting the central nervous system. In the third quarter of 2012 the company did report an increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2011 but it remains unprofitable and is expected to be in the red this year as well. It is another small-cap stock with about $150 million in market cap, but the average trading volume is over 200,000 shares and the current price is about $5.60 so it too tends to have over $1 million in daily dollar volume.

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