A pumpjack works at a well head on an oil and gas installation near Cremona, Alta.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Insider sentiment toward Canadian stocks remains broadly bullish as stocks come off their recent highs. Over the past 60 days, we are seeing more buying than selling on public markets by key insiders such as senior officers and directors.
Energy sector insiders have notably started to bet against the oil bears. As with the broad market, we see more stocks with key insider buying than selling. It is encouraging to see insider buying in the group, given that energy is still the top-performing sector with the S&P/TSX Capped Energy Index XEG-T, up 27.6 per cent year-to-date as of last Friday. It seems insiders are already spotting some opportunities and not waiting for a deeper energy stock pullback to start their buying.
Tamarack Valley Energy Ltd. TVE-T is a good example. The stock is up 58.5 per cent year-to-date as of last Friday, but we continue to see net insider buying. Over the past month, five insiders have spent a total of $1.58-million buying shares in the public market, while only one insider sold $130,170 worth of stock.
Tamarack Valley chief executive Brian Schmidt has set the company on course to be a pure-play Clearwater heavy-oil producer. He explained his rationale in a letter to shareholders on May 27. “Tamarack’s share price did not reflect the full value of these assets based on a sum-of-the-parts assessment of our business. The implication was an opportunity for us to capture more value for shareholders through further portfolio optimization,” he said in the letter.
In line with that thinking, Tamarack announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Charlie Lake assets for $804-million in cash, before adjustments.
The Charlie Lake transaction closed on June 15, and Tamarack revised its full-year 2026 guidance to average production of 62,000 to 64,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, versus 69,000 to 71,000 boe/d previously. In connection with the transaction, Tamarack is increasing its quarterly dividend by a cent to five cents a share, beginning with the third quarter.
There also continues to be insider buying at Whitecap Resources Inc. WCP-T, which is focused on oil and natural gas production in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. As of Friday, Whitecap is up 35.1 per cent in 2026, but the stock is off 7.8 per cent over the past month. Three insiders have spent just over half a million dollars buying the pullback. CEO Grant Fagerheim was the biggest buyer, picking up 18,600 shares at an average price of $15.76.
In the first quarter, Whitecap production averaged a record 391,416 boe/d (62-per-cent liquids), up from 379,606 boe/d in the fourth quarter. The production exceeded Whitecap’s original expectations by approximately 19,000 boe/d thanks to a combination of new wells, base production performance and wells coming onstream faster than planned. Whitecap raised its full-year production guidance by 7,500 boe/d to 378,000 to 382,000 boe/d (61-per-cent liquids), while maintaining its $2-billion to $2.1-billion capital budget.
There has been some insider selling in the sector over the past month, including at integrated giant Cenovus Energy Inc. CVE-T On May 27, CEO Jon McKenzie sold 69,387 shares at $39.51, a trade worth just over $2.7-million in gross proceeds. The share price has slid since the transaction, but there have been no subsequent insider public-market sales. Mr. McKenzie now holds 1,143,824 shares, according to INK data.
Should the energy sector’s downward momentum pick up steam over the summer, we would watch to see how insiders at Cenovus and other large oil patch names react. A broad pickup in selling might serve as a warning sign that the prospects for the Canadian oil patch are deteriorating.
However, right now, we are seeing opportunistic insider buying in some names, and with some reasonable levels of insider profit-taking in others. On balance, this is an encouraging setup and it favours the bullish take that investors have become too pessimistic on the medium-term outlook for the Canadian oil patch.
Ted Dixon is CEO of INK Research, which provides insider news and knowledge to investors.