Insider Buys Of The Week: Energy Transfer Equity, Energy Transfer Partners, RH

• Insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors.
• A couple of CEOs made notable share purchases this week.
• And insiders were buying at two merging sister companies.

Conventional wisdom says that insiders and 10-percent owners really only buy shares of a company for one reason — they believe the stock price will rise and they want to profit. So insider buying can be an encouraging signal for potential investors, particularly with markets at all-time highs.

Here's a look at a few notable insider purchases reported in the past week.

Energy Transfer Partners

Energy Transfer Partners LP ETP saw CEO Kelcy Warren step up to the buy window again this past week. The more than 1.63 million shares of this natural gas and propane company acquired, at per-share prices ranging from $22.22 to $22.65, cost him more than $36.74 million. Warren also purchased over 360,000 shares the previous week.

The more recent purchase came right around the time of news of a pipeline burst in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The stock ended the week trading at $22.27, still within the above purchase price range. The stock has changed hands between $15.06 and $24.38 in the past year, and the analyst's mean price target is $26.56.

Energy Transfer Equity

A Energy Transfer Equity LP ETE director more than double his stake last week. The 100,000 shares acquired of this so-called sister company of Energy Transfer Partners, at per-share prices between $17.40 and $17.77, cost him more than $1.76 million. This director also bought a smaller batch of the shares in the prior week.

Energy Transfer Equity and its sister company expect their merger to be completed in October. Its shares rose more than 2 percent but gave up that gain in the past week. They were last seen trading at $17.47. Here too, that level was within the director's purchase price range. The stock has traded as high as $19.34 in the past year, but the analysts' mean price target is $21.44.

RH

Restoration Hardware Holdings, Inc RH CEO Gary Friedman picked up more than 7,600 shares of the home furnishings retailer now known as RH. The share price for this purchase ranged from $130.96 to $131.20, for a total that was a bit shy of $1 million dollars. The stake was last seen at over 2.2 million shares, compared with more than 22 million outstanding.

Last week, an analyst recommended buying the recent dip in RH shares. The share price popped more than 5 percent late in the week and closed on Friday at $136.70, so the CEO's buy looks well-timed. While the stock has traded as high as $164.49 a share in the past year, the analysts' mean price target is $156.75.

See also: Gene Munster: 3 Ways Elon Musk Is Hurting Tesla

At the time of this writing, the author had no position in the mentioned equities.

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