Welcome to edition twenty seven of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased last week with insiders purchasing $83.4 million of their stock when compared to $12.9 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $1.75 billion worth of stock when compared to $1.27 billion in the week prior.
Sell/Buy Ratio:
The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider buying in that week. The adjusted ratio for last week plunged to 20.92. In other words, insiders sold almost 21 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the week prior when the ratio stood at 98.13. The spike in insider purchases was driven primarily by large purchases of Scientific Games (SGMS) by one of its directors and additional funding provided by Mr. Carl Berg for both Valence (VLNC) and MoSys (MOSY). We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.
Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series Introduction to Insider Weekends, certain industries have their preferred metrics such as same store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.
Notable Insider Buys:
1. Scientific Games Corporation (SGMS): $9.385
Shares of this producer of lottery systems were purchases by four insiders: