Prominent insider sales were detected in Royal Gold, Inc (NASDAQ:RGLD), OSI Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSIS), and Best Buy Co Inc (NYSE:BBY) this past week. If you’re wondering about the usefulness of monitoring such transactions, there are many studies to that end that prove insider trading activity is worth paying attention to. Quite simply, it is rather obvious that a company’s management has the best view of its prospects, and we get a glimpse of that through their trades. However, it should be noted that not all insider sales are necessarily a bearish signal; some sales me be made to re-balance investment portfolios, or for other financial purposes. However, it should also be noted that we only cover insider sales that were not conducted through trading plans, and thus could be defined as spur-of-the-moment trades. Now then, let’s deconstruct the insider sales in question and find out if there is a bearish trend lurking in the background. KPG_Payless/Shutterstock.com Besides insider trading we also play close attention to hedge fund sentiment. Most investors ignore hedge funds’ moves because as a group their average net returns trailed the market since 2008 by a large margin. Unfortunately, most investors don’t realize that hedge funds are hedged and they also charge an arm and a leg, so they are likely to underperform the market in a bull market. We ignore their short positions and... More