5 Stocks Insiders Love Right Now

Hercules Offshore

Another name insiders are snapping up here is oil well services and equipment player Hercules Offshore (HERO), which provides shallow-water drilling and marine services to the oil and natural gas exploration and production industry globally. Insiders are finding some deep value here since this stock has plunged 30% so far in 2012.

Hercules Offshore has a market cap of $491 million and an enterprise value of $1.16 billion. This stock trades at a reasonable valuation, with a forward price-to-earnings of 14.76. Its estimated growth rate for this year is 21.6%, and for next year it's pegged at 152.5%. This is not a cash-rich company, since the total cash position on its balance sheet is $165.06 million and its total debt is $823.89 million.

A director just bought 50,000 shares, or around $168,000 worth of stock, at $3.30 per share.

>>7 Stocks Under $10 With Relative Strength

From a technical perspective, HERO is currently trading below both its 50-day and 200-day moving averages, which is bearish. This stock has been hammered by the bears during the past three months, with shares dropping from a high of $5.56 to a recent low of $2.91 a share. During that sharp move lower, shares of HERO have mostly made lower highs and lower lows, which is bearish technical price action. That move is quickly pushing HERO back towards some previous support zones.

If you're in the bull camp on HERO, I would look for long-biased trades if this stock can manage to find buying interest near its previous support zones at $3.07 to $2.91 a share with strong volume. Look for volume to come in near those levels that registers close to or above its three-month average action of 4.1 million shares. Another way to play this is to simply buy HERO off strength once it clears both its 50-day at $3.98 and its 200-day at $4.17 a share with high-volume.

On the flipside, I would avoid this stock at all costs if it takes out those key near-term support levels of $3.07 to $2.91 a share with heavy volume. A high-volume move below those levels could easily setup HERO to re-test its 52-week low of $2.25 a share.

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