Welcome to edition 553 of Insider Weekends. In a tumultuous week that saw the S&P 500 drop 3.3%, insiders stepped up their buying with $30.78 million of stock purchased compared to $5.43 million in the week prior. After several weeks of lackluster purchases during the earnings related quiet period for most companies, it was good to see an interesting crop of purchases last week. Selling decreased with insiders selling $1.17 billion of stock last week compared to $1.69 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 37.93. In other words, insiders sold almost 38 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 310.71.
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. Teledyne Technologies Incorporated (TDY): $357.01
Executive Chairman Robert Mehrabian acquired 10,000 shares of this aerospace, defense and industrial instrumentation company, paying $366.05 per share for a total amount of $3.66 million. These shares were purchased indirectly through a trust.