A soon-to-depart CEO made a big purchase of his own company’s stock last week amid a rebound for the tech sector. PayPal CEO Dan Schulman scooped up more than 26,000 shares of his company’s stock last week, at a cost of nearly $2 million, according to VerityData and securities filings. Schulman is set to step aside as CEO at the end of the year. The purchase from Schulman comes after he scooped up 8,000 shares of PayPal in February 2022, near the start of the tech stock sell-off. Prior to that, Schulman had been a consistent seller of PayPal stock, according to VerityData. Shares of PayPal are up more than 3% this year, but are still down more than 50% from where the began 2022. Insider buying is tracked by many professional investors as a signal of a company’s quality. If an executive or board member is buying additional shares outside of their compensation, the theory goes, then they are likely to be confident in the outlook for the business and believe the stock is undervalued. Here is the full list of top insider buys from the past week, according to VerityData and securities filings. PayPal : $1.99 million buy from CEO Dan Schulman on Feb. 17. ConocoPhillips : $0.63 million buy from director Al Walker on Feb. 17 Wintrust Financial : $0.61 million buy from director Brian Kenney on Feb. 16 Devon Energy : $0.53 million buy from CEO Richard Muncrief on Feb. 17. Markel : $0.53 million buy from director Greta Harris on Feb. 17. Al Walker, the former Anadarko Petroleum CEO who sits on ConocoPhillips’ board, has since added to his Feb. 17 purchase with another buy of more than $600 of ConocoPhillips stock on Wednesday. Another insider purchase in the energy sector came from Devon Energy , where CEO Richard Muncrief bought more than $500,000 of stock on Feb. 17. Muncrief then also added another $265,000 worth of stock on Wednesday. The buying from Wintrust Financial director Brian Kenney is also notable. The firm announced a CEO change last month, and Kenney is now the second Wintrust director to buy the stock since that decision was made public.
