While Inogen, Inc. (NASDAQ:INGN) shareholders have had a good week with the stock up 12%, insiders can't say the same having sold stock over the past year. Had they waited, they might have been able to sell their stock at much higher prices and thereby received a better value on their investment.

Although we don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether.

See our latest analysis for Inogen

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Inogen

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider sale was by the insider, Jason Somer, for US$86k worth of shares, at about US$8.56 per share. That means that even when the share price was below the current price of US$10.88, an insider wanted to cash in some shares. As a general rule we consider it to be discouraging when insiders are selling below the current price, because it suggests they were happy with a lower valuation. However, while insider selling is sometimes discouraging, it's only a weak signal. It is worth noting that this sale was 69% of Jason Somer's holding. Jason Somer was the only individual insider to sell over the last year.

You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of small cap stocks that are not only being bought by insiders but also have attractive valuations.

Does Inogen Boast High Insider Ownership?

Another way to test the alignment between the leaders of a company and other shareholders is to look at how many shares they own. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. From looking at our data, insiders own US$2.4m worth of Inogen stock, about 1.0% of the company. I generally like to see higher levels of ownership.

What Might The Insider Transactions At Inogen Tell Us?

The fact that there have been no Inogen insider transactions recently certainly doesn't bother us. We don't take much encouragement from the transactions by Inogen insiders. And usually insiders own more stock in the company, according to our data. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. While conducting our analysis, we found that Inogen has 1 warning sign and it would be unwise to ignore this.

But note: Inogen may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

For the purposes of this article, insiders are those individuals who report their transactions to the relevant regulatory body. We currently account for open market transactions and private dispositions of direct interests only, but not derivative transactions or indirect interests.

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