Welcome to edition 493 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased significantly last week with insiders purchasing $76.94 million of stock last week compared to $225.13 million in the week prior. Selling also decreased with insiders selling $1.57 billion of stock last week compared to $2.26 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 went up to 20.41. In other words, insiders sold almost 21 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 11.72.
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. NuStar Energy L.P. (NS): $28.22
Director William E. Greehey acquired 527,426 units of this oil & gas midstream company, paying $28.44 per share for a total amount of $14.99 million. Mr. Greehey increased his stake by 5.78% to 9,646,530 shares with this purchase.