Welcome to edition 478 of Insider Weekends. With the S&P 500 down 6% by the middle of last week from its all time peak set on July 26th, insiders stepped up their buying significantly resulting in a number of interesting insider purchases. Insider buying more than doubled last week with insiders purchasing $283.3 million of stock last week compared to $108.48 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand decreased with insiders selling $1.6 billion of stock last week compared to $2.16 billion 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 5.66. In other words, insiders sold almost 6 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 19.92.
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. Symantec Corporation (SYMC): $23.51
Director Peter A. Feld acquired 5,325,814 shares of this security software company, paying $22.69 per share for a total amount of $120.83 million. These shares were purchased indirectly by Starboard Value and Opportunity Master Fund Ltd.