Queries The Insider Trading report

I have been a reader of your paper for many years and wish to commend you on its format and informative content. I am particularly interested in the Insider Trading column.

Are these listed insider trades made at market prices or can they also reflect “insider prices”? Could you also include what exchange the trades were made on, i.e. (T), (M) etc.

Also, I have noticed that an insider sometimes buys and sells the same number of shares at the same time. I assume that these were not bought and sold at the same price — a somewhat confusing assumption. A.R., Forest Hills, N.Y.

I have been a reader of your paper for many years and wish to commend you on its format and informative content. I am particularly interested in the Insider Trading column.

Are these listed insider trades made at market prices or can they also reflect “insider prices”? Could you also include what exchange the trades were made on, i.e. (T), (M) etc.

Also, I have noticed that an insider sometimes buys and sells the same number of shares at the same time. I assume that these were not bought and sold at the same price — a somewhat confusing assumption. A.R., Forest Hills, N.Y. The Insider Trading Report, which we try to carry weekly, has become an integral part of the trading pattern of more and more investors. Indeed we are surprised at the number of our readers who show a high interest in this particular feature, as revealed by a recent mini-survey carried out by our editorial and circulation departments.

All data for this column is taken directly from the Weekly Bulletin of the Ontario Securities Commission as published by Dataline Inc., summarized from the insider reports that are required to be filed regularly with that Commission. We, in turn, must summarize the some 30 pages of this material that comes into our editorial offices weekly. We, of course, review the mining and oil companies and report only those trades that we deem to be significant. And because space in this paper is invariably at a premium, this requires a high degree of selectivity. Too, we can only report data that is provided. That precludes some of the information that you request such as the exchange where the trading took place.

As to the prices at which the transactions are made, these can include both those made on the open market as well as those pertaining to the exercise of options. And there can be quite a difference. So to attempt to report any actual prices might well appear confusing and create more problems than it would solve. However the osc report now does carry what they call a “unit price” in some cases, but most of the prices of the mining stocks are simply listed as “various”.

When the number of shares bought and sold are similar, they likely represent a stock cross of some nature, or the exercising and selling of an option rather than the normal day-to-day trading.

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