Welcome to edition 538 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased once again last week with insiders purchasing $51.69 million of stock compared to $60.83 million in the week prior. This is the third consecutive week of declines in insider buying. Selling on the other hand increased with insiders selling $2.14 billion of stock last week compared to $1.74 billion in the week prior. We normally see a decline in both insider buying and selling during earnings related quiet periods but this quarter while we have seen a decline in buying, selling has headed in the other direction and has ramped up.
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 41.34. In other words, insiders sold more than 41 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 28.61.
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. Gossamer Bio, Inc. (GOSS): $9.68
Shares of this biotech company were acquired by 3 insiders: