Welcome to edition 415 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased significantly last week with insiders purchasing $119.66 million of stock compared to $40.06 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $1.76 billion of stock last week compared to $1.48 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 dropped to 14.69. In other words, insiders sold almost 15 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 36.95.
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. Continental Resources, Inc. (CLR): $68.17
CEO & Chairman Harold Hamm acquired 136,000 shares of this oil and natural gas exploration and production company, paying $65.30 per share for a total amount of $8.88 million. Mr. Hamm increased his stake by 9.58% to 1,555,859 shares with this purchase.