Since February 22, 2005 Downey Financial's stock price has increased by 24% from $59.45 to $73.75 per share. During this period of time Directors have purchased $5.6 million of shares. Actually, one Director, James Hunter, has purchased $5.2 million of company shares.
What explains James Hunter's buying panic during this price run-up?
During the past 24 months Director James Hunter has purchased 257,440 shares (worth almost $20 million). Yet on May 25, 2005 he claimed to own only 87,947 of those shares (worth only $6.6 million). Where are the missing 170,000 shares? finance.yahoo.com
Disposition of shares by sale, gift, or divorce etc must be reported, so why does he have nearly 170,000 shares less than he reports purchasing? Unless we can find another explanation, two years ago he was net-short 170,000 shares of Downey Financial. If I was short 170,000 shares during a price run-up, I might be buying as well. That could have been a financial loss of $2.4 million for Mr Hunter.
What about other Directors? Only one, Brent McQuarrie, purchased $400k of shares during this price run-up. But over the past two years, he has increased his company ownership by only 1.1% from 417k to 421k shares. At current share prices this is an increase of $355k on $31,567,000.
Wouldn't you like to know the real details of what is going on?
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