Value stocks -- a market segment that includes high-yield stocks -- outperformed growth stocks in 2022. That's a recent rarity, as for the past decade-plus, the performance record has favored growth. But in 2022, The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines gave a lift to some of the cyclical companies (energy and regional banks) that had lagged in recent quarters, and value stocks outpaced growth stocks that year. While growth stocks have retaken the lead since 2023, the Federal Reserve continues to keep interest rates high to fend off inflation. This could possibly cap multiple expansion for growth companies in coming quarters. In any event, the value sector is the place to achieve income.

The Vickers Top Buyers & Sellers is a daily report that identifies the five companies the largest insider purchase transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions as well as the five companies the largest insider sales transactions based on the dollar value of the transactions.

Truist Financial was formed through the December 2019 merger of equals between BB&T Corp. and SunTrust Banks. The combined company has about $520 billion in assets and ranks as the sixth-largest bank for both assets and deposits in the U.S.

We've highlighted cautious insider-sentiment for several months now, but also noted that selling by insiders into a consistently rising market is not unusual. So while 'caution' has been our word of choice, we haven't called for a major equity correction. More recently, volatility has spiked in the form of rotation from semiconductors to almost anything else, a belief that the Fed will indeed cut rates in September, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, a massive IT breakdown that crippled many global entities, and the suspension of Joe Biden's presidential campaign. There are indeed many reasons to feel some uncertainty -- and in keeping with that, the weekly insider-sentiment data from Vickers Stock Research has pushed deeply into bearish territory. But one week is not a trend, and the current data is built on low transaction volume because of trading restrictions during earnings season. So while we're still not ready to ring any alarms -- and might even call any reset in stocks prices healthy for the long term -- we'll continue to monitor the trading activity of corporate insiders to see if this one-week spike shows signs of growing. On a sector basis, selling by insiders last week was greatest in Information Technology, with shares valued at $335 million sold versus less than $9 million bought, followed by Financials ($73 million sold). Meanwhile, buying outpaced selling in Energy and Real Estate. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) and AutoNation Inc. (NYSE: AN