AGNC Investment Corp. is a publicly traded REIT focused on residential housing. The company's investment portfolio consists of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) managed on a leveraged basis. The company uses an actively managed portfolio and hedging strategies with the goal of preserving net asset value in different interest rate scenarios.

It is hard to find anything but good news in the current weekly insider-sentiment data from Vickers Stock Research. Volatility remains the order of the day in the stock market -- but for three consecutive weeks, the data from Vickers has suggested a bottom may be near, or already in. Let's jump right to the numbers. Vickers' NYSE One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio is 1.30 this week, this on a scale where anything below 2.00 is bullish. The ratio has been bullish for the past three weeks. Moving to the Nasdaq, the one-week ratio is 2.40. That is still neutral but closing in on bullish, and the ratio has been strong enough of late to engender nine consecutive weeks of improvement in the broader Nasdaq Eight-Week Sell/Buy Ratio. That reading has improved to 3.28 (neutral) from 5.20 back on March 10. All of the above has Vickers' Total (all exchanges) One-Week Sell/Buy Ratio at a bullish 1.76 and the Total Eight-Week Sell/Buy Ratio close to bullish at 2.63 after nine weeks of improvement. On a sector basis, insider buying exceeded selling in Financials last week, with shares valued at $4.5 million bought versus $3.9 million sold. Buying also outpaced selling in Energy, although volume was light with less than $100,000 shares bought during the period. Selling was the greatest in Consumer Discretionary over the last week, with shares valued at $21 million sold versus just $2 million bought. Selling was also notable in Industrials, Consumer Staples, and Healthcare. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at HEICO Corp. (NYSE: HEI) and Elevance Health Inc. (NYSE: ELV).

The rubber ball that is short-term insider sentiment has bounced yet again. Looking at the one-week sell/buy ratios from Vickers Stock Research, we'll focus initially on the Total ratio, which takes in account insider transactions on all exchanges. On a scale that is bullish below 2.00, neutral between 2.00 and 6.00, and bearish above 6.00, Vickers' Total One-Week Sell/Buy ratio rings in this week 5.33. That is at the high end of the neutral range, but follows readings of 10.25 last week (solidly bearish), 6.34 the week before that (bearish), and 9.66 the week before that (again, solidly bearish). Drilling down on an exchange basis, the results on the NYSE for the last four weeks are a bit calmer, with a currently neutral one-week ratio of 3.90 after readings of 6.25 (bearish), 6.55 (bearish), and 7.95 (a bit deeper into the bearish zone) over the previous weeks. That leaves the Nasdaq, which is indeed 800-pound gorilla in all of this. The Nasdaq one-week ratio is currently 6.46 (bearish), but follows 14.06 last week (very bearish), 6.89 the week before that (bearish), and 15.57 the week before that (again, very bearish). End of day, current insider-sentiment reading are volatile, matching the broader market -- where the VIX Volatility Index is at 18.68 as of this writing, but was as low as 14.58 on January 24 and as high as 22.51 on January 27. There are multiple catalysts impacting equity markets and insider-sentiment readings reflect that volatile state of affairs. This week, analysts at Vickers highlighted insider transactions of interest at Midland States Bancorp (NGS: MSBI) and RLI Corp. (NYSE: RLI).

AGNC Investment Corp. is a publicly traded REIT focused on residential housing. The company's investment portfolio consists of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) managed on a leveraged basis. The company uses an actively managed portfolio and hedging strategies with the goal of preserving net asset value in different interest rate scenarios.