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Welcome to edition 355 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased with insiders buying $5.99 million of stock compared to $77.54 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand increased with insiders selling $712.03 million of stock last week compared to $514.22 million in the week prior. We normally see a seasonal drop in insider transactions at the start of each quarter and while this $6 million in insider purchases appears low, we also saw just $4 million in purchases in the first week of January. Looking back over the last five years, this has been the lowest level of insider purchases in the first week of April, which has ranged from a low of $7.57 million in 2016 to as high as $50.3 million in 2012.
While insider buying was dull, the natural beauty of the Sierra Nevada region with ample snow this Spring was stunning. A couple of pictures from a trip to Lake Tahoe last weekend are given below.
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 went up to 118.82. In other words, insiders sold almost 119 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 6.63.
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. G-III Apparel Group, Ltd. (GIII): $24.43
CEO Morris Goldfarb acquired 39,689 shares of this apparel company, paying $22.13 per share for a total amount of $878,345. Mr. Goldfarb increased his stake by 1.02% to 3,912,586 shares with this purchase.