Fighting Low Stock Prices, Annaly Insiders Buy Shares

This REIT is one which we just featured in the special report called Five Dangerous Dividends Yields Above 10%. While Annaly is a dangerous dividend, its management team is supposed to be among the best among of their peers when it comes to public MBS REITs. We have seen two key insiders buying shares, which means other employees may follow suit.

• Wellington Denahan, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer was shown in an SEC filing from Tuesday to have purchased some 93,000 common shares on November 8 at $10.68 per share. This gives a direct ownership of 1,288,081 shares plus another 850,000 or so in stock options.
• Kevin Keyes, President, was also shown to have purchased some 100,000 common shares on November 12 at $10.43 per share. That takes the net holdings up to 300,000 shares.

On a side-bar note, Citigroup maintained a Neutral rating, but we heard that the price target was downgraded to $10 from $12 for the stock.

Annaly shares closed up 1.25 at $10.51 on more than 24 million shares on Tuesday against a 52-week trading range of $10.30 to $16.18. Its dividend has proven to be dangerous as its direction has been a lower quarterly payment trend for about three years. That being said, investors love seeing insider buying trends as well.