Welcome to edition fifty five of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased with insiders purchasing $69.72 million of their stock last week when compared to $43.2 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand decreased with insiders selling $550.9 million worth of stock compared to $1.13 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 purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week dropped to 7.9. In other words, insiders sold nearly 8 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the week prior when the ratio stood at 26.12. 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. Titanium Metals Corporation (TIE): $17.28
Chairman of the Board Harold C. Simmons acquired 2,461,428 shares of this titanium metal producer, paying $16.70 per share for a total amount of $41.1 million. These shares were purchased indirectly by TIMET Finance Management Company.