These stocks are down more than 25% this year, but insiders are buying more

Published Tue, May 24 202211:05 AM EDT

Jesse Pound @/in/jesse-pound @jesserpound

The stock market has not been able to stop its recent slide, but corporate insiders are starting to get more active, and that could be a good sign for outside investors. Insider stock purchases is a metric that many professional investors use to evaluate a company. If an insider is buying up the stock, the thinking goes, it could be a sign that the people within a company are more confident in its prospects than the broader market. And with so many stocks down dramatically for the year, some insiders are seeing opportunities. The list below is stocks who are down more than 25% year to date and have seen major insider purchases over the past week, according to InsiderScore.com/Verity and securities filings. One of the most notable insider purchases has come at SoFi , where CEO Anthony Noto scooped up roughly 40,000 shares last week. That is on top of a purchase of 39,000 shares on May 13. Combined, those purchases totaled about $550,000. Fintech companies have fallen out of favor in recent months. SoFi's stock is down more than 50% this year, and it took a big hit earlier this month when the company accidentally released its first-quarter results early . The report showed a weaker-than-expected forecast for the second quarter. Another area of the market that has been hit hard is e-commerce. The group saw a big boost in sales during the pandemic, but the consumer spending shift away from goods and concerns about a recession and supply chain issues are hurting the stocks. At Wayfair , director Michael Choe is betting on a bounce-back for the industry. He purchased $1.7 million of the stock last week. Choe now owns roughly 159,000 shares of Wayfair, a stake worth about $8 million at Monday's closing price. But the biggest purchase may have come at Coinbase , the crypto exchange whose growth has stalled amid a decline in the price of bitcoin. Director Fred Ehrsam bought $25 million worth of shares last week. That is in addition to a purchase of $50 million earlier in the month. Outside of the list above, there were also some companies that saw notable insider buying, but were offset at least partially by sales from other figures at the firm. Two examples last week were HubSpot and Coupang .