Menu
Welcome to edition 394 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying declined significantly in a holiday shortened week with insiders purchasing $7.58 million of stock compared to $28.43 million in the week prior. Selling more than doubled with insiders selling $647.6 million of stock last week compared to $314.96 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 85.44. In other words, insiders sold more than 81 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavourably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 11.08.
While this level of insider buying and the big spike in the Sell/Buy ratio may be cause for concern, insider buying is generally muted toward the end of a quarter and the start of the next quarter. The 2.6% increase in the S&P 500 last week to new highs may also be giving insiders pause.
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. Biglari Holdings Inc. (BH): $417.98
Director Sardar Biglari, acquired 4,589 shares of this holding company, paying $418.50 per share for a total amount of $1.92 billion. These shares were purchased indirectly by The Lion Fund.