Welcome to edition 477 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders purchasing $108.48 million of stock last week compared to $128.07 million in the week prior. Selling also decreased with insiders selling $2.16 billion of stock last week compared to $3.09 billion in the week prior. Over 45% of the sales this week were on account of a large sale of Amazon stock by Jeff Bezos. He also accounted for nearly 60% of all insider sales last week.
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 19.92. In other words, insiders sold almost 20 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 24.18.
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. DISH Network Corporation (DISH): $32.39
Chairman Charles W. Ergen acquired 500,005 shares of DISH Network, paying $31.45 per share for a total amount of $15.72 million. Mr. Ergen increased his stake by 36.87% to 1,856,075 shares with this purchase.