Insiders were net buyers of St Barbara Limited's (ASX:SBM ) stock during the past year. That is, insiders bought more stock than they sold.

While insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether.

Check out our latest analysis for St Barbara

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At St Barbara

Over the last year, we can see that the biggest insider purchase was by MD, CEO & Director Andrew Strelein for AU$94k worth of shares, at about AU$0.19 per share. Even though the purchase was made at a significantly lower price than the recent price (AU$0.23), we still think insider buying is a positive. Because the shares were purchased at a lower price, this particular buy doesn't tell us much about how insiders feel about the current share price.

The chart below shows insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last year. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of undervalued small cap companies that insiders are buying.

Does St Barbara 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 AU$5.9m worth of St Barbara stock, about 3.2% of the company. We consider this fairly low insider ownership.

So What Do The St Barbara Insider Transactions Indicate?

It doesn't really mean much that no insider has traded St Barbara shares in the last quarter. But insiders have shown more of an appetite for the stock, over the last year. We'd like to see bigger individual holdings. However, we don't see anything to make us think St Barbara insiders are doubting the company. Therefore, you should definitely take a look at this FREE report showing analyst forecasts for St Barbara.

Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies.

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.