Buying and selling

A quick rundown of the insider transactions that took place this week:

• Victor Keen, bought 5,000 shares
• Richard Hermon-Taylor, bought 6,525 shares
• Marion Philip Guthrie, bought 2,500 shares
• Robert Saxe, bought 5,700 shares... from Robert Budin

Not quite Malvino-esque in terms of nickel-and-dime trading, but well within the domain of "token" transactions nonetheless, particularly since, in the case of the newcomers to the board, this represents their initial positions in the stock. But the most interesting one is, obviously, the last one. It speaks to the lack of liquidity in the stock these days that Budin decided he needed to arrange a private transaction to dispose of $35,000 worth of stock, rather than attempt to sell it into the market.

And Joe Harary? No purchase at all. Hunh.

Annual meeting? What annual meeting?

It seems a practical certainty by now that a substantial number of long-time REFR shareholders bailed into last year's run-up in the stock. No one is more notable by his absence than message board poster "ed_wesnofske", who, while not a frequent contributor to the boards in recent years, still had proven reliable with his summaries of annual meetings in the past. But now Ed has been away from the board for over ten months, and with a week gone by since the meeting the hopes of seeing one of his detailed reports on the annual meeting are fading.

On a related note, we have no word from "stanedel" on how his proposals for management shake-up were received. I have to confess to not holding out a lot of hope for him, and his silence after the fact isn't doing anything to dispel that inclination.

Mind you, a few familiar aliases have resurfaced on the message boards, apparently reinvigorated by something (unspecified) they heard at the meeting, but so far nothing particularly focused has emerged as any kind of selling point.

Apart, that is, from a round of stock transactions, but that's material for another post...