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It may mean nothing, but it makes me nervous when highly paid executives exercise options early.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1...2906082942-.xml
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He sold about 8% of his holdings at a price 20% higher than todays. He's also in his late 60s and has most of his net worth tied up in NICK. I don't know how good sales are as predictors of a companies future, I've always read that purchases are a better indicator because people sell for lots of reasons (tax planning, diversification home purchases, divorces, pessimism over companies future, etc), but typically only buy for one reasons. They think the company is undervalued.
In this case he could be pessimistic, or buying a big boat, or both. It's not unreasonable to assume he'd like to sell more for diversification purposes, or even try to sell the company at some point. Last summer the CFO mentioned that they had been approached by private equity firms on a regular basis. I'd hate a company sale because I like to think of this as a long term holding, but it could produce a positive short term profit.