Stocks fall as insiders sell

Stocks fell on Friday. The MSCI All-World Index declined for the sixth consecutive day, falling 0.6 percent to a one-month low.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3 percent, extending a weekly slide to 2 percent, the largest weekly drop since January. This left the index down 0.4 percent for the year so far.

Markets were not helped by weak economic data on Friday.

In the US, the preliminary reading of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment came out at 79.9 in March, down from 81.6 in February.

Another report showed that the producer price index fell 0.1 percent in February after a 0.2 percent increase in January.

In the UK, the trade deficit widened in January as goods exports fell 4 percent to their lowest level since June 2012.

Construction output rose 1.8 percent in January though after having fallen 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter.

While the recent decline in stocks have been attributed mostly to the tension in Ukraine and concerns over weaker economic growth, it has also been presaged by some relatively heavy selling by corporate insiders in the US recently.

Mark Hulbert reports that in recent weeks, corporate officers and directors have sold an average of six shares of their company’s stock for every one that they bought. That is more than double the average ratio since 1990.

The two prior occasions when the ratio got almost as high as today were in early 2007 and early 2011. Both were followed by steep falls in the stock market.