Insiders who purchased Altair Minerals Limited (ASX:ALR) shares in the past 12 months are unlikely to be deeply impacted by the stock's 17% decline over the past week. After taking the recent loss into consideration, the AU$415.6k worth of stock they bought is now worth AU$866.1k, indicating that their investment yielded a positive return.

While insider transactions are not the most important thing when it comes to long-term investing, logic dictates you should pay some attention to whether insiders are buying or selling shares.

Check out our latest analysis for Altair Minerals

In the last twelve months, the biggest single purchase by an insider was when insider Fadi Diab bought AU$316k worth of shares at a price of AU$0.0012 per share. Although we like to see insider buying, we note that this large purchase was at significantly below the recent price of AU$0.0025. While it does suggest insiders consider the stock undervalued at lower prices, this transaction doesn't tell us much about what they think of current prices.

While Altair Minerals insiders bought shares during the last year, they didn't sell. You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by companies and individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you want to know exactly who sold, for how much, and when, simply click on the graph below!

There are always plenty of stocks that insiders are buying. If investing in lesser known companies is your style, you could take a look at this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

For a common shareholder, it is worth checking how many shares are held by company insiders. We usually like to see fairly high levels of insider ownership. It appears that Altair Minerals insiders own 37% of the company, worth about AU$4.0m. While this is a strong but not outstanding level of insider ownership, it's enough to indicate some alignment between management and smaller shareholders.

It doesn't really mean much that no insider has traded Altair Minerals shares in the last quarter. However, our analysis of transactions over the last year is heartening. Overall we don't see anything to make us think Altair Minerals insiders are doubting the company, and they do own shares. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. To assist with this, we've discovered 6 warning signs that you should run your eye over to get a better picture of Altair Minerals.