Director buying, selling stay low amid reporting season

THE buying was low for the second straight week based on filings on the Singapore Exchange from Feb 13 to Feb 17 with four companies that recorded five purchases worth S$0.23 million. The number of firms and trades were unchanged from the previous week while the buy value was sharply down from the previous week's acquisitions worth S$0.74 million. The selling, on the other hand, rebounded with one firm with two disposals worth S$0.91 million. There were no sales by directors in the previous week.

Meanwhile, the buyback activity was flat with four companies that posted 13 repurchases worth S$1.64 million. The number of trades was sharply up from the previous week's eight repurchases while the number of firms and value were down from the previous week's five companies and S$2.2 million.

The low corporate shareholder activity in the past two weeks are not surprising due to the busy reporting season from February to April as directors and listed firms are prohibited from trading during the one month prior to the announcement of results. Despite the low number of filings, there were several significant transactions last week with rare buybacks by Miyoshi Limited and insider buys in Avi-Tech Electronics following the increase in their share prices.