Forget those bearish factors – directors have come out and bought shares across a wide front: heavyweight stocks, small caps, miners and explorers.

Some directors, though, peeled off shares, mostly at the small-cap end.

The scorecard registered $29 million to $55 million in favour of sellers, which compared with $3 million to $10 million in favour of buyers previously.

Among buyers, Gerald Harvey weighed in well clear of the rest of the field when he added to his Harvey Norman stake.

On the selling side, a couple of his fellow directors, David Ackery and Christopher Mentis, exercised options at 3.02 apiece and sold scrip at $4.19.

Also taking a big hand among buyers was Christopher Ellison, managing director of Mineral Resources, a mining services and processing group.

Now, Mr Ellison's buying is of some interest if you subscribe to the straw hats in winter school of thought.

In 2012, Ellison, chairman Peter Wade and a few other directors sold almost $80 million of shares, collecting about $12.30 each.

In 2014, Mr Ellison collected about $23 from sales at $11.30 a share.

He has just paid $4.28 a share.

The ubiquitous "normalised" tax-paid and pre-charges earnings measure for the June year was $109 million, compared with $243 million previously.

Mineral Resources is valued by the market at $778 million.

Elsewhere, various members of the BHP fat cattery sold shares and did so, they said, to meet expected tax obligations.

Elsewhere, the founders of Surfstitch Group, Justin Cameron and Lex Pedersen, peeled off 10 million shares at $1.78 apiece to "meet increasing demand for liquidity" for shares in the online retailer.

The group is valued by the market at $407 million and recently reported pro-forma pre-tax earnings of $4.1 million.