Fans of mining identity Tolga Kumova should be watching New Century Resources (ASX:NCZ) since he spent $1.1 million on it in the last two weeks.

Mr Kumova — one of the stockmarket’s most closely followed small cap investors — was a founding director of the zinc explorer when it backdoor listed onto the market last year.

New Century had just raised $40 million in a share placement to sophisticated and institutional investors to fund the Century Zinc mine.

Mr Kumova was the number two investor before the raise, but now owns slightly more of the company — 5.35 per cent — based on ASX records of shares on issue on Friday.

He managed to buy near the bottom on May 3, 4, 7 and 8, paying between $1.10 and $1.13.

Making bank

Wenyuan Zhao made a $1.3 million exit from Jiafugu Modern Agriculture (ASX:JJF) last week last week, selling his entire 22.95 per cent shareholding in JuXin Holding, which owns 55 million shares in Jiafugu.

His new colleague on the board, Haizhu Cai, bought $106,000 worth of shares, or 1.84 per cent of the JuXin interest Mr Zhao just got rid of.

Pro-Pac Packaging’s (ASX:PPG) outgoing director Elliot Kaplan, who stepped down from the chairmanship last year to make way for ex-Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour, is making a last hurrah during his final days at the company.

Mr Kaplan sold $152,173 of shares last week, a month after he said he’d step down as a director after 13 years on the board.

It’s not the only selling in Pro-Pac.

The company recently allowed one of its major shareholders to break escrow and sell out of the company.

Tiniest trades
In another of the ASX’s tiniest trades, as a director at Arc Exploration (ASX:ARX) must have broken a record.

Director Andre Cooke bought four shares — yes, four — for $2.04. He now owns 10,185 shares.

It was part of an off-market trade to wrap up an unsellable parcel of shares.

Astivita (ASX:AIR) director Lev Mizikovsky somehow spent the princely sum of $460.20 buying on market. Normally the minimum is $500 a trade.

Four days later he beefed that up a touch with a $1950 trade. He owns 37.6 million shares.

Mr Mizikovsky was a bit more generous in his spending at Tamawood (ASX:TWD), a company he founded in 1989. He spent $422,000 on 100,000 shares there last week.

His eponymous holding company now owns 48.36 per cent in the house builder.

Going shopping

The market was not kind to Reward Minerals (ASX:RWD) director Michael Ruane last week, when he bought shares for 20.4c ($120,269 in total) and sold at 19.9c ($79,912).

He still owns about 30 per cent of the company though.

BidEnergy’s (ASX:BID) James Baillieu — son of ex-Victoria premier Ted — bought $142,000 shares on market.

The substantial shareholder note the company put out later though was incorrect — Mr Baillieu was likely surprised to see his 8.5 per cent shareholding had dropped after buying 4 million shares.

After a wildly successful re-entry to the market that saw its shares spike 66 per cent, Orminex (ASX:ONX — nee Mintails) chairman Daryl Henthorn has bought another $100,302 in the business.

He managed to buy at 5.3c. The company closed last week at 6.9c, but raised capital before the name change at 3c.

Dubber chairman Peter Pawlowitsch bought $384,000 of shares off market last week.

Mr Pawlowitsch also chairs Novatti and sits on the boards of sand miner Ventnor Resources and Knosys.

Getting some exercise

Twas the time to exercise large chunks of options last week.

HiTech (ASX:HIT) chief Elias Hazouri exercised $638,000 worth of options so now he owns 6.8 million shares; while Lepidico’s (ASX:LPD) managing director made a motza exercising then selling.

Julian Walsh paid $272,250 to exercise 15 million options, the promptly sold 5 million of his new shares and made almost all of that back — $211,310.

He still has 52.5 million options priced between 1.82c and 9.1c to exercise. Lepidico closed last week at 4.3c.