Insider Trading Report Edition 273: Notable Buys And Sales

Welcome to edition 273 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased last week with insiders buying $48.28 million of stock compared to $39.54 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand declined with insiders selling $273.36 million of stock last week compared to $508.05 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 down to 5.7. In other words, insiders sold almost 6 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 12.85. We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.

Insider Sell Buy Ratio September 11, 2015

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. Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX): $11.4

Vice Chairman of the Board James C. Flores acquired 2,200,000 shares of this mining company, paying $9.70 per share for a total amount of $21.34 million. 700,000 of these shares were purchased indirectly by Sable Management, L.P. and 1,500,000 shares were purchased indirectly by Flores No. 2 Family Limited Partnership.

Voluntary Disclosure: I hold a long position in Freeport-McMoRan.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Freeport-McMoRan Inc. here.