24/7 Wall St.

Needless to say, with Christmas and New Year’s on back-to-back Fridays this year, the trading volume has slowed to the proverbial crawl as traders and investors take a break to be with friends and family and celebrate. One thing is for sure, the insiders and 10% owners did some late shopping and continued to buy stock this past week at a furious pace.

We cover insider buying every week at 24/7 Wall St., and we like to remind our readers that while insider buying is usually a very positive sign, it is not in of itself a reason to run out and buy a stock. Sometimes insiders and 10% owners have stock purchase plans set up at intervals to add to their holdings. That aside, it still remains a positive indicator.

Here are some of the companies that reported notable insider buying last week.

Crestwood Equity Partners L.P. (NYSE: CEQP) was on our 24/7 screens again this past week. A 10% owner of the company, First Reserve GP XI, bought an additional 504,214 shares at prices between $16.05 and $18.60 apiece. The total for the purchase came to $8.5 million. The company provides midstream solutions to customers in the crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids portions of the energy sector in the United States. Shares closed trading Thursday at $20.62, so it appears to be a well-timed buy.

Prospect Capital Corp. (NASDAQ: PSEC) also hit our screens for the second week running, and the buying pace picked up. Its chief executive and the chief operating officers bought a combined 820,000 shares of the stock at prices that ranged from $6.74 to $6.78. The total ticket for their buys was $5.5 million. This business development company specializes in middle market, mature, mezzanine finance, later stage, emerging growth, buyouts, recapitalizations, turnaround, growth capital, development, subordinated debt tranches of collateralized loan obligations, cash flow term loans and bridge transactions. Shares ended trading on Thursday at $7.29.

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