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Insider Weekends – January 30, 2015

  • February 1, 2015

Welcome to edition 241 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased significantly last week with insiders buying $196.76 million of stock compared to $16.43 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $1.49 billion of stock last week compared to $936.53 million in the week prior. The big jump in insider buying was partially on account of existing insiders participating in certain secondary offerings and the partial removal of the earnings related overhang.

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 7.56. In other words, insiders sold almost 8 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 57. 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, 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. A. M. Castle & Co. (CAS): $6.05

10% Owner William C. Martin acquired 250,000 shares of this specialty metals and plastics distribution company, paying $6.04 per share for a total amount of $1.51 million.

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