JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon dumped $150 million in the companyâs stock Thursday in his first-ever sale, a recent filing shows. He had previously indicated an intent to unload stock.
Dimon sold 821,800 JPMorgan shares
JPM,
at average prices near $182.73, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sales were made through a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows company insiders like executives and board members to arrange for stock to be sold under predetermined conditions.
Shares of JPMorgan âhave been hitting all-time highs in recent days so itâs unclear if these are triggersâ or if the plan was arranged for sales based on timing, wrote Ben Silverman, the vice president of research at VerityData, which tracks insider activity.
He noted in his report that a âreview of the stockâs daily chart brings up some questions as to whether trigger prices were employed.â Dimonâs selling took place on the first day ever that JPMorgan shares traded at and upwards of $182, he highlighted.
JPMorganâs stock had risen about 30% since Dimon adopted his trading plan, âwhich would be a fairly ambitious trigger for a plan with a relatively short duration,â Silverman said. The plan expires Aug. 23, and Dimon could sell up to 178,000 more shares under it.
Dimon last year disclosed the plan to sell up to a million shares for âfinancial diversification and tax planning purposes.â JPMorgan declined to comment Friday on Dimonâs selling beyond what was in that October filing.
Silverman said he had expected Dimon to start selling near this time as the âcooling-offâ period for his trading plan recently lapsed, though he was anticipating that Dimon would dump shares more âmethodicallyâ rather than through a giant sale at the start.
Other JPMorgan insiders sold stock as well Thursday. Chief Information Officer Lori Beer dumped $716,000 in stock, and General Counsel Stacey Friedman sold $1.1 million. Troy Rohrbaugh, who serves as co-CEO of JPMorganâs commercial and investment bank, unloaded $13.7 million in stock.
Those sales also came through trading plans.
âThese are sales of a small fraction of their holdings and in accordance with 10b5-1 selling programs,â a JPMorgan spokesperson said.
Prior to Thursdayâs selling, Dimon was a buyer of JPMorganâs stock, last scooping up stock on the open market in February 2016, according to Silverman.
âDimonâs surprising selling behavior â and the fact that he has a strong buying track record â alongside the cluster of sales represents a cautious data point,â he wrote.
