Welcome to edition 499 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders purchasing $7.49 million of stock compared to $16.77 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand increased significantly with insiders selling $1.19 billion of stock last week compared to $433.74 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 158.33. In other words, insiders sold more than 158 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 25.86.
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. Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. (LW): $90.48
Chairman of the Board, William G. Jurgensen acquired 18,000 shares of this packaged foods company, paying $92.01 per share for a total amount of $1.66 million. Mr. Jurgensen increased his stake by 14.00% to 146,536 shares with this purchase.