Corporate executives and board members have made several notable buys of their own stock in the opening days of May, including a big Wall Street name buying shares of Walt Disney . Director James Gorman bought 20,000 shares of the entertainment company for $2.1 million on May 8, according to securities filings and VerityData. Gorman was formerly the CEO at Morgan Stanley. Gorman’s buy is something of an outlier among Disney executives this year, as two executive vice presidents have made small sales in 2024. Many professional fund managers track insider buying and selling to pick up clues about stocks. The idea is that the moves can be a signal of how confident a management team is in the direction of the business. Here are the biggest stock purchases from corporate insiders in early May, according to VerityData and securities filings. Gorman’s buy wasn’t the largest in corporate America so far this month. Sensata Technologies director Ali John Mirshekari bought $10.6 million worth of shares over two days in the first week of May. However, the positive signal of that buy may have been partially offset on May 8 by CEO Martha Sullivan’s move to exercise stock options and then selling those shares, generating $4.6 million. Shares of Sensata are up about 13% year to date, so Mirshekari’s purchase could be a bet that the rally will continue. However, some of the other big purchases on the list come from companies whose share price is struggling. Shares of Macerich , a real estate investment trust, is little changed on the year but fell sharply in late April after reporting a loss for the first quarter. Since then, new CEO Jackson Hsieh bought 140,000 shares for about $2 million. Several other Macerich insiders have also bought shares in May. MAC 1M mountain Shares of Macerich had a brief dip in late April. Meanwhile, Caesars Entertainment and Vestis are both down sharply year to date but have seen individual directors spend more than $1 million on their stock in May. For Caesars, director Michael Pegram’s roughly $1.5 million purchase was labeled a “high IQ buy” by VerityData. Pegram also bought shares in March. — CNBC’s Nick Wells contributed reporting.
