Sellers again very much to the front CHRISTOPHER WEBB August 14, 2010
SELLERS were again in command over the past week or so with disposals totalling $20 million - about half on account of Sam Walsh at Rio Tinto - compared with a paltry $1.5 million for those doing a bit of buying.
And a very little bit it was, too, with Alasdair Cooke, a founding director of Exco Resources, topping the buying side of the ledger with the purchase of stock at 32 apiece.
Scrip in the copper and gold group has gone for a decent old run in the last little while: 10 trading days ago it was fetching 27. Yesterday it hit 41.
Elsewhere on the resources front, the esteemed Guy, Earl of Warwick, popped up as a buyer of Central Asia Resources, paying 3.5 a share. Last year he was mentioned as a buyer here, on that occasion paying 6.5.
This week there was reduced buying of stocks that have disappointed on the earnings front.
A second director of Alesco, the construction and mining division, garage door and water products group, put on a buying order.
Jim Hall paid $2.66 a share for 20,000 shares, a few pennies more than Ern Pope paid for 25,000 shares last week.
It will be interesting to see if any director of Computershare decides to support the stock following earnings news that sent the stock 10 per cent lower over the week.
The last director action in the shares was in February when company strongman Christopher Morris sold nearly 2 million shares at $11.92.
Around that time, his sister Penelope Maclagan sold about 54,000 shares at $12.02 each.
The shares closed at $9.23 this week
Yasmin Allen, who joined the Cochlear board this month, more than doubled her stake, buying 1500 shares. She now has $174,050 of stock.
Elsewhere, Gary Weiss decided to buy 10,000 shares in Premier Investments. That sure looks a lot better than his previous nil balance.
On the selling side, Rio's Sam Walsh helped boost turnover when he exercised some mighty profitable options and sold the resulting shares.
About half of 113,223 options were exercised at $18.30 apiece and the rest at $30.93 each. The resulting shares, along with 20,000 other shares, were sold at an average $73.51 each. Very nice indeed.
Elsewhere, Brett Pointon, chief of Oaks Hotels & Resorts, helped turnover when he sold 8.5 million shares to China Pacific, which is described as a new cornerstone investor.
Also adding some bulk was David DeVoe, numbers man at News Corp, who disposed of $1.5 million of stock.
