Srat Man and all -- What apparently is not clear to many investors are recent insider transactions. Christiano Amon reported 3 automatic (i.e., planned) sales of QCOM on October 1, 2025. Patricia Grech also reported automatic sales on September 22, 2025. Automatic sales are usually reported on or near the time that a corporate executive or director acquires new shares as part of an employee stock option plan.
An automated sale, which usually occurs about the same time as an automatic acquisition, has little or no meaning as an indicator of future company fortunes. And even if a sale did have some significance, it would only be in the framework of numerous sales by other company insiders. This is not the case at present for QCOM. Investors who monitor insider selling need to put the nature of sales and the number of insiders selling into perspective. For the moment, there is NO SIGNIFICANCE based on the data at hand, which I obtained from Fidelity, which in turn relies heavily on data assembled by Morningstar.
The Securities & Exchange Commission regularly reports planned insider sales or actual sales on forms 144s and 4s. However, the SEC apparently is not working these days, so we may not see any new reports of insider transactions for awhile. Fear and uncertainty, created partly by a lack of data, and recently by policies held by the SEC and the administration, may increase because efforts are being made to replace quarterly reports by semi-annual reports, and to ignore many of the checks and balances created by the SEC as early as 1934, along with the regulation of mutual funds under laws enacted in 1940. Dismantling these checks and balances at a time when stocks in general are at or near all time highs should be a warning to any prudent investor.
Now, why are QCOM shares trading well below recent highs at a time when its technology is finding ever more uses in accessing and manipulating AI, when its vehicle software is finding more and more customers, when its robotics, vision, and related technologies are generally acknowledged to be cutting edge? One explanation worth noting is the latest data on short sale positions, as of September 30, showing 3.2 days to cover. The shares held by institutions were reduced by 3.2 million during September.
I am also noticing heavier than normal institutional selling of shares other than QCOM, especially shares in biotechnology stocks on the premise that the administration is increasing tariffs on countries which sell drugs at prices below what is paid in the U.S. These are significant indicators of a tech and biotech bubble the likes of which haven't been seen in some 25 years. Draw your own conclusions.
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