Welcome to edition 286 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased significantly last week with insiders buying $596.73 million of stock compared to $45.92 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand decreased with insiders selling $767.16 million of stock last week compared to $1.15 billion in the week prior. The big spike in purchases this week was related to Carl Icahn adding to his stakes in Hertz (HTZ) and Cheniere Energy (LNG).
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 1.29. In other words, insiders sold a little more stock than they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 25.02. 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.
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. Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN): $63.13
Chief Executive Officer Stephen A. Wynn acquired 1,003,977 shares of this resorts & casinos operator, paying $63.61 per share for a total amount of $63.86 million. Mr. Wynn increased his stake by 2553.67% to 1,043,292 shares with this purchase.
You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Wynn Resorts Ltd. here.
2. Energy Transfer Equity, L.P. (ETE): $13.34
Shares of this natural gas pipeline company were acquired by 4 insiders:
