Director Murray Wright bought 25,000 shares in December, an investment exceeding $400,000. These were Wright's first purchases since selling 35,000 shares at over $40 last year. Like Wright, I am long Synalloy.

Robert O' Shea's Trust Ventures just keeps buying TRU shares ahead of the liquidation vote. O'Shea, who has obviously crunched the numbers, must believe that a dissolution will yield substantially more than current prices.

Texas investor Geoffrey Raynor increased his investment in Comsys, an IT staffing company, purchasing over 500,000 shares in December. Oops! CITP shares lost over 15% in the first week of 2008.

Do you think only retail investors are guilty of doubling down? Look no further than Georgia Gulf, where Rodger Krouse's Sun Capital funds increased their underwater bet by over a million dollars in December

Director Michael Lowe bought over $2 million worth of this Georgia bank holding company in December. By my back-of-the-enveloe calculations, he now owns over a quarter of outstanding shares.