"Hey, I'm buyin' over here!"

It has long been suggested (and, naturally, flatly denied) that many of the REFR insider stock purchases are "for show", as if to say, "we're buying, shouldn't you?" Al Malvino's regular 300-share purchases seems particularly flagrant in this regard, as many metrics for detecting high insider purchasing activity key off the frequency of transactions more than the actual amounts involved. In theory, this works off the fact that most executives consider it proper to limit their transactions to a small annual window to avoid the appearance of trying to game their own stock. REFR insiders, clearly, have no such inhibitions.

Possibly the worst example, though, came when Corporate Secretary and Board of Directors member Victor Keen made a stock purchase in February 2003, and the company issued a press release about it. Yes, really!

Mind you, not long after that purchase and the market bottom a month later, that purchase price actually started to look really good. Alas, it did not quite hold up for the two-year holding period, and in any event Keen did not sell with the stock being held at $6.00 in anticipation of the secondary offering, so ultimately, Keen has taken a bath on those shares along with everyone else.

But then again, that's not news.