Insider Trading Weekly: The Biggest Buys And Sells

Five Star Bancorp is the California holding company of Five Star Bank, a Sacramento-area commercial lender listed on Nasdaq. The identical round price of $44.00 is explained by the 8-K filed on 23 July 2026: on 22 July the company agreed with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods to sell 2,725,000 new shares at $44.00 off its Form S-3 shelf, for expected net proceeds of about $112.9 million. The directors were therefore subscribing to their own bank’s capital raise at the fixed offering price, not accumulating on the open market. Six directors filed for 22 July purchases totalling 142,727 shares and roughly $6.28 million, about 5.2% of the deal, so the cash committed was real even if the mechanism was an offering rather than a market bid.

Parabilis Medicines, formerly FogPharma, is a clinical-stage company developing Helicons, stabilized helical peptides designed to enter cells and bind intracellular targets long considered undruggable. Lead candidate zolucatetide targets the beta-catenin/TCF interaction in the Wnt pathway and has been evaluated in more than 150 patients; in desmoid tumors the company reported a 74% objective response rate among patients with at least two post-baseline scans. The company listed on Nasdaq in June 2026 at $20.00 per share. This is one of the few genuine conviction buys of the week: RA Capital, a Section 16 insider because partner Jake Simson sits on the board, bought 244,593 shares across 20, 21 and 22 July for about $6.92 million at prices from $26.53 to $30.00, well above the IPO price.

Energizer Holdings makes batteries and portable lights under the Energizer and Rayovac brands and auto-care products including Armor All and STP; fiscal second-quarter net sales were $643.3 million with net earnings of $10.1 million. Aqua Capital, Ltd. is a British Virgin Islands vehicle that has been filing on Energizer since October 2019 and reported 7,000,000 shares, or 10.25%, in August 2025. The Form 4 shows six separate open-market lots of 20,000 shares on 21 and 22 July at weighted-average prices between $19.67 and $20.96. Since 2 February 2026 the group has added about 880,000 shares for roughly $17.3 million, taking its direct holding to 7,880,000 shares, close to 11.5% of the company, with purchases on nearly every trading day in July and no Rule 10b5-1 plan flagged.

Artiva Biotherapeutics is a San Diego clinical-stage company built around AlloNK, an allogeneic off-the-shelf natural killer cell therapy given with rituximab to deepen B-cell depletion in autoimmune disease. On 8 May 2026 it reported positive initial data in refractory rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren disease and systemic sclerosis, with no cytokine release syndrome or neurotoxicity reported, plus FDA alignment on a single registrational trial; three days later it priced a $300 million offering at $11.52 per share. RA Capital, which files both as a 10% owner and as a director because partner Laura Stoppel sits on the board, bought 264,586 shares on 21, 22 and 23 July at $9.55 to $9.96, extending an averaging-down campaign that has taken its stake to 18,402,206 shares, roughly 38% of the company.

Alpha Cognition is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company whose only marketed product is ZUNVEYL, benzgalantamine, a delayed-release oral acetylcholinesterase inhibitor approved by the FDA on 26 July 2024 for mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s dementia and launched on 19 March 2025 into long-term care. First-quarter 2026 net product sales were $3.50 million against $0.35 million a year earlier, with a net loss of $6.48 million and $54.2 million of cash at 31 March 2026. Opaleye Management, a Boston manager filing as a 10% owner, bought 200,086 shares on 22 and 23 July at weighted averages of $7.83 and $7.80, taking its holding to about 14% of the company. These are open-market purchases, not participation in a placement.

Pinnacle Financial Partners is the $129.1 billion asset regional bank created when legacy Pinnacle and Synovus completed their merger on 1 January 2026. Second-quarter results published on 22 July showed net income available to common shareholders of $313 million, adjusted earnings per share of $2.50 against $2.00 a year earlier, loans of $88.1 billion and a preliminary CET1 ratio of 9.93%. Two days later Chief Banking Officer and director Robert A. McCabe Jr bought 10,013 shares on the open market at a weighted average of $99.90, with no Rule 10b5-1 plan flagged. A review of his filings since January 2021 shows no previous open-market purchase of Pinnacle stock, which makes this a discretionary post-earnings buy rather than a routine transaction.

ClearSign Technologies, based in Tulsa, develops combustion and flame-sensing technology for industrial burners, boilers and refining, with $7.7 million of cash and a $2.2 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026 after a one-for-ten reverse split in March 2026. The 500,000 shares at $3.54 reported by John M. Pasquesi were not bought on the market: the 8-K filed on 23 July states that on 21 July the company signed a Stock Purchase Agreement with Otter Capital LLC and sold it 500,000 new shares for $1,770,000 in gross proceeds, after the underwriter waived a lock-up. The shares are restricted and the proceeds go to working capital and research: this is fresh financing for the issuer priced at market, not a purchase of existing stock.

B&R Technology Merger Corp is a Cayman Islands blank-check company with no business combination target selected as of its prospectus; its IPO of 32,500,000 units at $10.00 priced on 21 July 2026. The Form 4 footnote is explicit: the 687,500 securities are shares underlying private placement units acquired by the sponsor under a purchase agreement with the company itself. The 8-K of 23 July confirms that, simultaneously with the IPO closing, the company sold 687,500 units to the sponsor at $10.00 for $6,875,000 of gross proceeds, of which $4,875,000 went into the $325 million trust account. This is the standard sponsor at-risk contribution that funds a SPAC, not a discretionary purchase expressing a view on price.

ZeroStack Corp, incorporated in Ontario and headquartered in Dallas, is the former Flora Growth Corp: it sold its legacy hemp and cannabis business in September 2025 and now holds and stakes native tokens of the Zero Gravity blockchain. The transaction is not a cash purchase: the Form 4 footnotes state the price was paid in native blockchain tokens deemed to be worth $0.7549 each, and the shares are held by Zero Gravity Labs Inc., controlled by Michael Heinrich. The 8-K of 23 July describes the closing of a crypto financing in which investors contributed 142,232,948 tokens for 9,104,614 shares, so the $3,479,013 figure is simply the share count times the per-token value rather than the economic size of the deal. The market capitalisation shown by screeners is not reliable: the share count roughly quintupled on 20 July 2026, and the company carries a going-concern disclosure.