Validus Holdings Ltd (NYSE:VR)
Validus Holdings, Ltd. (VR), a global company that provides reinsurance coverage, insurance coverage, and insurance linked securities management services yesterday announced that their CEO Edward Noonan sold 273,000 shares of the company’s common stock. The sale was made due to outstanding tax related obligations due to the exercise of expiring options during the 2015 tax year.
Validus Holdings, Ltd. CEO’s Comments
Commenting on the sale, Mr. Noonan stated, “Since the founding of the Company, I have not sold a single share of Validus stock and it would be my strong preference not to. I have done so now solely for liquidity purposes in order to pay tax obligations.”
VR Technical Analysis
VR opened trading yesterday at $54.80, which was up from the previous day’s trading close of $54.75. Shares closed trading yesterday at $53.86 and spiked up in the after-market to $54.95, equivalent to a 2% increase from the closing price. Taking a look at the daily chart we can see that the last time VR traded above these levels we have to go back to December 12th when it traded at $55.10. Taking a closer look at the daily chart we can see that before the spike up VR had already been in an overall upward trend dating back to October 6th when it traded at $48.85. VR has a float of 72.72 million shares and traded 1.55 times the normal daily trading volume on Tuesday. For trading purposes, I would like to see VR open trading on Wednesday above yesterdays close and if it does I would be looking to take a long position at the bell. My stop loss would be $0.25 from my entry position fearing anything more than that and the stock would start to fill in the gap up. My friend Ross over at Warrior Trading is applying his Day Trading Strategies to these types of stocks.
Company Profile
Validus Holdings, Ltd. provides reinsurance coverage, insurance coverage, and insurance linked securities management services worldwide. It operates through four segments: Validus Re, Talbot, Western World, and AlphaCat. The Validus Re segment offers treaty reinsurance products, such as property catastrophe, property per risk, and property pro rata reinsurance; marine reinsurance; and other lines of business, including aerospace and aviation, agriculture, financial, terrorism, life, accident and health, nuclear, workers’ compensation, crisis management, contingency, casualty, technical, composite, and trade credit lines. The Talbot segment underwrites property, marine, specialty, political, aviation, accident and health, and contingency, as well as coverage for various types of financial institutions and similar companies.
The Western World segment insures small to medium size commercial and institutional risks covering general, professional, and product liability, as well as miscellaneous malpractice and property classes. The AlphaCat segment provides investment advising services; manages capital from third parties and its insurance linked securities; and offers other investments in the property catastrophe reinsurance space. Validus Holdings, Ltd. was founded in 2005 and is based in Pembroke, Bermuda.