This Insider Has Just Sold Shares In CNA Financial

We wouldn't blame CNA Financial Corporation (NYSE:CNA) shareholders if they were a little worried about the fact that Scott Lindquist, the Executive VP & CFO recently netted about US$1.1m selling shares at an average price of US$47.64. That sale reduced their total holding by 24% which is hardly insignificant, but far from the worst we've seen.

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The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At CNA Financial

The Executive VP & Chief Administrative Officer, Daniel Franzetti, made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for US$1.2m worth of shares at a price of US$53.09 each. While we don't usually like to see insider selling, it's more concerning if the sales take place at a lower price. The silver lining is that this sell-down took place above the latest price (US$47.32). So it is hard to draw any strong conclusion from it.

Insiders in CNA Financial didn't buy any shares in the last year. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

Check out our latest analysis for CNA Financial

I will like CNA Financial better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of undervalued and small cap stocks with considerable, recent, insider buying.

Insider Ownership

Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It appears that CNA Financial insiders own 0.6% of the company, worth about US$75m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.

So What Do The CNA Financial Insider Transactions Indicate?

An insider sold CNA Financial shares recently, but they didn't buy any. And even if we look at the last year, we didn't see any purchases. But it is good to see that CNA Financial is growing earnings. Insider ownership isn't particularly high, so this analysis makes us cautious about the company. So we'd only buy after careful consideration. In addition to knowing about insider transactions going on, it's beneficial to identify the risks facing CNA Financial. Every company has risks, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for CNA Financial you should know about.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

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