Welcome to edition 534 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased significantly last week with insiders purchasing $108.3 million of stock compared to $31.16 million in the week prior. Selling also increased significantly with insiders selling $2.07 billion of stock last week compared to $749.85 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 dropped to 19.1. In other words, insiders sold more than 19 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 24.06.
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. Public Storage (PSA): $221.01
Director Tamara Hughes Gustavson acquired 37,031 shares of this self-storage REIT, paying $217.65 per share for a total amount of $8.06 million. Ms. Gustavson increased her stake by 0.22% to 16,889,476 shares with this purchase.