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Welcome to edition 524 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders purchasing $183.24 million of stock compared to $286.95 million in the week prior. Selling also decreased with insiders selling $975.88 million of stock last week compared to $2.21 billion in the week prior. Given that we are at the start of a new quarter and an earnings related quiet period at most companies, insider activity is likely to be muted in coming weeks and I would not read much into the drop in insider buying or selling.
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 5.33. In other words, insiders sold more than 5 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 7.69.
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): $18.3
Executive Chairman Harold Hamm acquired 4,435,425 shares of this oil and natural gas exploration and production company, paying $16.53 per share for a total amount of $73.31 million. These purchases follow a 3.44 million share purchase for $57.12 million we reported last week.