Buffett on why he wants the seven-footer. Ninety seconds, worth it.
Ken Courtis sits on Alpha’s board. In 2026 he wrote cheques for $26 million of AMR stock with his own money. Greg Alexander runs Conifer Management. His fund now has $400 million sunk into Group 1 Automotive, and about $270 million of that went in this year. The position tripled in nine months.
These are the largest insider buys I have seen since I started this newsletter. The biggest relative to who was buying, how often, and at what prices.
A coal miner and a car dealer have nothing in common. Except for a few things. Both are aggressive cannibals. Both are hated. Both have floats small enough to count by hand. And in both, insiders are buying while the shorts are selling.
Today, neither man is allowed to buy a single share.
Let me start there.
Why Courtis bought at $230 and ignores $150
AMR traded around $150 this summer and Courtis was not buying. Then the stock ran to $190, $200, $230, and he bought aggressively. Now it is back at $170 and he sits on his hands.
Buy high, ignore low. It looks stupid. So I read Alpha’s insider trading policy.
Alpha has mandatory quarterly blackouts. They begin on March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15 and run until three trading days after the company reports. During a blackout a director cannot buy.
The Q2 blackout started June 15. For most of the time AMR sat at $150, Courtis was locked out.
After Q2 earnings the door opened. He walked through it on August 20 at $190 and kept walking. Above $200. Around $216. Still buying above $230. Fifty thousand shares in three weeks, about $10.5 million.
He never had the choice between $150 and $210. When he was let in, the stock was already high. He bought anyway. His last purchase was September 8. On September 15 the door closed. That is why he is not buying at $170. He cannot.
Alpha should report Q3 in the first week of November. Three trading days later, Courtis gets his key back.
Why Alexander stopped at 12.7%
Conifer had no such door. Alexander is not a director, and Group 1’s blackout policy only binds directors, officers and employees. Conifer could buy whenever it wanted. And it did, every week from late June to September 18.
On September 21 the rules changed. Group 1 and Conifer signed a Stockholder Agreement. Conifer’s Benjamin Hart joins the board on November 1. In return, Conifer signed one sentence:
“Conifer shall only trade in Common Stock during an Open Window.”
Before every trade Conifer needs clearance from Group 1’s Chief Legal Officer. And unlike Alpha, Group 1 publishes no fixed dates. The CEO or CFO sets the window “from time to time.”
The same agreement caps Conifer at 19%.
Read that as I read it. Conifer did not stop at 12.7% because they were done. They stopped because the door was about to close, and they negotiated room for six more percentage points before it did.
So both buyers are locked out today. Both get their keys back in early November.
The six questions
Every insider buy I look at gets the same six questions. They tell me whether I’m looking at a seven-footer, or a 5-foot-3 guard with a great handle.
How much real money is at risk, relative to the buyer?
Did they pay cash on the open market, or was it handed to them?
One purchase, or a pattern?
Did they keep buying after the stock stopped being cheap?
What do they know that I do not?
And is there any reason to buy other than “this is worth more than I am paying”?
I ran both men through all six. One of them is buying value. The other is buying value and a fight. But there is a seventh question, and it matters more than the other six combined.
Who is on the other side?
Short interest on AMR is 12.4% of the float. On Group 1, 11%. You can find those numbers on any free website. Both numbers are correct.
Both are useless.
Below the line I show you why, what it costs to bet against these two companies, and the one thing that made me sit up in September. AMR’s shorts covered. And their situation got worse anyway…
