Welcome to edition 529 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased last week with insiders purchasing $283.47 million of stock compared to $172.17 million in the week prior. Selling decreased with insiders selling $3.58 billion of stock last week compared to $5.71 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 12.64. In other words, insiders sold almost 13 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 33.14.
I received a question via Twitter about whether the Sell/Buy ratio was unusually high last week and you can see my response below.
There is quite a bit of variability in the Sell/Buy ratio and the times when it stands out the most is when it hits extremes, like in mid-March when insider buying surpassed insider selling for the first time in over a decade as we discussed here. We wrote the following in that mid-March article,
The large and rapid drop in the markets has created some interesting opportunities and while I remain bearish for now, I am looking at several ideas on the long side that I hope to get into in the coming weeks. The fallacy of the human condition is that we expect things to continue as they are and a rapidly evolving future or Black Swan events are usually given low credence.