Happy New Year and welcome to edition 185 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased with insiders purchasing $9.42 million of their stock last week compared to $4.87 million in the week prior. Selling decreased with insiders selling $425.98 million of stock last week compared to $2.81 billion in the week prior.
In addition to tallying up the insider purchases and sales from the last week, I figured I would also calculate the sum of all insider purchases and sales for 2013 and see how it compares with insider activity in 2012. As a group, insiders purchased $3.69 billion of stock in 2013, which was up slightly considering insiders bought $3.64 billion worth of stock in 2012. Selling on the other hand increased 24% to $80.67 billion in 2013 when compared to $65.03 billion in 2012.
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 decreased to 45.23. In other words, insiders sold more than 45 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at a record 576.9. 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 January 3, 2014
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. Opko Health, Inc. (OPK): $8.58
CEO & Chairman Phillip Frost M.D. acquired 191,500 shares of this medical devices and drug development company, paying $8.48 per share for a total amount of $1.62 million. These shares were purchased indirectly by Frost Gamma Investments Trust.
