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Welcome to edition 370 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $15.01 million of stock compared to $46.08 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand increased with insiders selling $1.28 billion of stock last week compared to $490.44 million 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 went up to 85.25. In other words, insiders sold more than 85 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 10.64.
I went hiking to Carlon Falls in Yosemite this weekend and enjoyed a refreshing swim at the base of the falls on a hot summer afternoon. Equally enjoyable were the two podcasts I was listening to on my drive there and back. The two podcasts were “Masters in Business” interviews by Barry Ritholtz with Ed Thorp and noble laureate William Sharpe. The Ed Thorp interview was especially enjoyable as I am currently mid way through his book A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market. I highly recommend both these podcasts and Mr. Thorp’s book, which my business partner recently gifted to me.
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. Mastech Digital, Inc. (MHH): $8.82
Shares of this information technology (IT) staffing provider were acquired by 2 insiders: