Potential America's Car-Mart, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRMT) shareholders may wish to note that the CEO, President & Director, Douglas Campbell, recently bought US$199k worth of stock, paying US$61.62 for each share. While that's a very decent purchase to our minds, it was proportionally a bit modest, boosting their holding by just 4.8%.

America's Car-Mart Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

In the last twelve months, the biggest single sale by an insider was when the insider, Adam Peterson, sold US$8.3m worth of shares at a price of US$125 per share. While insider selling is a negative, to us, it is more negative if the shares are sold at a lower price. It's of some comfort that this sale was conducted at a price well above the current share price, which is US$59.01. So it may not tell us anything about how insiders feel about the current share price. Adam Peterson was the only individual insider to sell over the last year.

Happily, we note that in the last year insiders paid US$230k for 3.61k shares. On the other hand they divested 69.30k shares, for US$8.3m. 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 growing companies that insiders are buying.

Insider Ownership Of America's Car-Mart

Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. America's Car-Mart insiders own about US$25m worth of shares. That equates to 6.7% of the company. While this is a strong but not outstanding level of insider ownership, it's enough to indicate some alignment between management and smaller shareholders.

What Might The Insider Transactions At America's Car-Mart Tell Us?

It is good to see the recent insider purchase. However, the longer term transactions are not so encouraging. While recent transactions indicate confidence in America's Car-Mart, insiders don't own enough of the company to overcome our cautiousness about the longer term transactions. In short they are likely aligned with shareholders. While we like knowing what's going on with the insider's ownership and transactions, we make sure to also consider what risks are facing a stock before making any investment decision. You'd be interested to know, that we found 1 warning sign for America's Car-Mart and we suggest you have a look.

If you would prefer to check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity 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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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.