You can drop the fake Obe one Kenobe stuff, Fred, and I’ll take you seriously and I won’t disrespect you, either.
As your article points out, insiders are not always right. But also, they aren’t always trying to be. A lot of insiders sell stock pretty much all the time, just to support their lifestyles. But they also have other assets and lines of credit, etc., and they also have some control, just like the rest of us, regarding discretionary spending.
They’re also human beings with emotions and feelings of loyalty and pride and so on towards their employers (especially if they’re running them.) When they see their company stock pummeled down below what they think is fair, they hold back. They won’t sell.
But they’re not necessarily long-term investors trying to hold on ’till the market eventually peaks years down the road. Again, this is just another form of income for many of them and anyway, they’re already overexposed to just this one company and they know they should rebalance anyway.
So what happens is that once the market begins to get back into territory they can possibly stomach as remotely fair, they start selling again. And because they haven’t been doing it for a while, there’s some pent-up selling at the front.
Bottom line: Reasonable people will disagree, but I think insider trading stats are a lot more helpful at the top of a bull (when you’re looking for the one person who doesn’t believe we’re headed straight to the moon) than they are when we’re still digging our way out of a recession.