I hate to try and explain how the US market and reporting works, because it can sound condescending, but I am going to give my 2 cents with apologies to those who are offended.
Today's price reaction, IMHO, is a direct result of the report of Pryor's sales
Practically no one (except for those who actually analyze the company before investing) looks at the actual transaction and the number of sales held. What the news snippet does is report insider sales or insider buys and send it out as an alert to the news media. Insider sales/buys are followed by thousands of investors who take their clue about buying or selling stocks. Sales as low prices creates a perception that if the CFO or Ex CFO is selling shares then perhaps the company is not as sound as it would otherwise seem. Likewise buys at low prices creates the opposite perception.
I didn't respect Pryor while he was acting CFO and am withholding judgement on the new one, Hastings, although his response to the cash burn while truthful was incomplete. We do not know whether or not UNIS (UNS) will actually have to go to the market for additional capital infusion. I wanted to hear him say, that with the last round of financing and the deals in process we are confident that we will not need additional external financing. Unfortunately, I did not hear that, nor did the market, and the stock reacted adversely. The good news for me is that I took this opportunity to buy more at what I consider cheap prices, unfortunately a lot of weak hands also sold because they reacted to the news as opposed to doing their own due diligence.
Investing is as much an emotional decision as it is a rational decision. If emotions weren't involved the likes of Tesla ( who make a great car) and Amazon would never see the kind of prices they are at, if the investment was based upon fundamentals. Neither company has ever made a profit using GAAP accounting and may not make any profit in the foreseeable future, yet their stock prices are at irrational levels, while the likes of UNIS are struggling to gain respect, partially because of the CEO's checkered past.
My purpose to report the sale was to warn others to expect a price drop based upon my past experience and based upon some of the comments perhaps I should have been more explicit. The fact that he sold only 17K of his 500K of holdings is insignificant to the potential damage a sale such as this can create.
