If you were an HBAN officer and buying $100K worth of shares to just prop it up, the risk would be that if it went under and you lost your job you would also be out $100K at the same time. Not a good position in this market,as a banker you would have a pretty good idea that if you lost your job you would have a very hard time finding another Banking job. SO, I doubt that they are buying just to create confidence. They are buying because they know that their company is under valued and being held down temporarily due to general market conditions of which they are betting, from their frame of reference, that the upside is looking good....