These stocks had the biggest sales by executives in the past week

Executives or officers of major companies filed some notable stock sales with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

Some investors follow company insiders, especially hefty moves or a cluster of moves, on the notion that they would know better than anyone when it's the right time to buy or sell shares in their company.

The data, which is from VerityData, is confirmed against the original SEC filings. These exclude where the filing explicitly says the sale was conducted pursuant to preplanned 10b5-1 trading plan, meaning the focus is instead on discretionary activity.

Here's some of the biggest sales from the last week:

Heico executive chairman Laurans Mendelson sold 56,300 shares at an average price of $319.45. That makes for a total of nearly $17.99 million.

Shares in the jet engine and airplane component maker were up 37% over the past three months. Heico hit an all-time high earlier this month.

AeroVironment CEO Wahid Nawabi sold 17,300 shares at an average price of $263.05 for a total of $4.55 million.

Shares of the drone maker have soared more than 90% over the past three months.

Costco officer Yoram Rubanenko sold 4,000 shares at an average price of $974.96, amounting to $3.9 million. The sale reduced Rubanenko's holdings of COST by about 41%.

Shares have about flat over the past three months.

Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya sold 25,583 shares at an average price of $138.81, leading to a total of $3.58 million. The sale reduced Yeshaya's holdings by nearly 17%.

The sale coincided with sales from five other company insiders, which totaled $20 million.

Shares were up 33% over the past three months. The stock hit an all-time high earlier this month.

John Reed, Johnson & Johnson‘s executive vice president, sold 19,100 shares of the stock at an average price of $163.55, totaling $3.13 million. The sale reduced Reed's holdings by about 64%.

Shares were up more than 4% over the past three months.

Paychex CEO John Gibson sold 12,400 shares at an average price of $141.92. All together, that totals $1.76 million.

Company insiders, also including the finance chief, have dumped $16.6 million in shares over the past 30 days.

Shares of the HR firm have risend nearly 2% over the past three months.

William Radford Lovett II, an investor at Dream Finder Homes, sold 48,500 in shares of the homebuilder at an average price of $29.96. That totaled $1.31 million.

Shares of the homebuilder have climbed about 24% over the past three months.