Those of you familiar with my approach to the market know that I’m not much of a trader. I spend my day in front of a screen, but I don’t track dots and bits flashing by, like my friends with trading positions do.

I’m an investor in the most literal sense of that word – end of the day, what I want is to buy stock in a good business, at a great price, hold it for a long time, and sell it for many multiples of what I’m paying for it today.

Warren Buffett wrote something great about that in the Berkshire Hathaway annual letter released in late February. He said, “Please note particularly that we own stocks based upon our expectations about their long-term business performance and not because we view them as vehicles for timely market moves. That point is crucial: Charlie and I are not stock-pickers; we are business-pickers.”

Me too, Warren, me too. And one of the most effective ways I have found over the years is to pay attention to what the really smart money is buying at a given moment in time.

Some of the smartest money comes from insider purchasing. When corporate execs and board members buy stock with their cash, history tells me that paying close attention and digging deep into the company to see what they see is often a brilliant idea.

This week, I want to point out two insider cluster buys that have the potential for outsized returns. Neither of them are making big, sexy moves in the headlines, but I think they’ll make excellent long-term holds…

This Local Bank Could Be Worth Big Bucks

The first is from my favorite sector, the community banking industry. Blue Foundry Bancorp (NASDAQ: BLFY) is a recent thrift conversion that did its IPO back in July of 2021. The bank is located in Rutherford, N.J.

Originally founded back in 1939 as Boiling Springs, Blue Foundry now has 16 branches in Bergen, Morris, Essex, and Passaic Counties in New Jersey. It has $1.9 billion in total assets right now. Like most recent conversions, most of the lending portfolio is residential. Almost 85% of the loan book is either single or multifamily housing.

There is no fancy story here, and there doesn’t need to be one. This is a well-run bank with lots of capital and a solid loan portfolio that insiders are buying aggressively. It’s trading well below book value – around $13 as of Thursday – but this much insider buying after the IPO is usually a recipe for success and significant long-term gains.

The other company with insider cluster buying that I’m tracking has a bit more of a long shot feel to it, but if the turnaround happens as I expect, you could see monster gains from the stock.

Buy the Company Teaching the Next Generation of Healthcare Workers

Adtalem Global Education Inc. (NYSE: ATGE) is a for-profit education company that operates university and educational programs.

Over the past year, it has been selling its business, finance, and general education programs to focus on healthcare. It used some of the cash to purchase Walden University, a school that provides programs for advanced degrees and doctorates in several areas, but mostly notably, healthcare.

Its healthcare enrollments have been weak during the pandemic, but this will eventually become a massive opportunity, due to a huge exodus of workers from that space. Doctors, nurses, and paramedics have been quitting or retiring early to escape the pandemic’s mental and physical toll.

But after it’s over, the healthcare industry will need to reload, and Adtalem should see strong student enrollments driving revenue and earnings growth.

The huge role it plays in educating the next wave of badly needed healthcare professionals could drive an earnings explosion that takes this stock to more than five times its current price.

Not only that, but insiders are betting big on this one. Nine different insiders made open market purchases last month. Trust me when I tell you they didn’t open their checkbooks and buy stock hoping for a paltry 10% return on the cash.

They expect many multiples of what they’re spending, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll get what they’re hoping to see.

— Tim Melvin

Source: Money Morning