Welcome to edition 268 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying declined last week with insiders buying $118.14 million of stock compared to $174.82 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand increased with insiders selling $2.25 billion of stock last week compared to $2.08 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 went up to 19.07. 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 11.89. 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 August 7, 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. Colfax Corporation (CFX): $40.12

Director Mitchell P. Rales acquired 261,600 shares of this manufacturing and engineering company, paying $38.41 per share for a total amount of $10.05 million. Mr. Rales increased his stake by 2.60% to 10,321,361 shares with this purchase. 250,000 of these shares were purchased indirectly by Colfax Capital Corporation and 1,500 shares were purchased indirectly by Mr. Rales as custodian for his daughters.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Colfax Corporation here.

P/E: 19.44 Forward P/E: 18.75 Industry P/E: 19.25 P/S: 1.15 Price/Book: 1.54 EV/EBITDA: 10.14 Market Cap: $4.98B Avg. Daily Volume: 1,004,820 52 Week Range: $37.59 – $65.5

2. Sears Holdings Corporation (SHLD): $24.39

Shares of this department stores chain were acquired by 2 insiders:

Chief Executive Officer Edward S. Lampert acquired 377,950, paying $20.90 per share for a total amount of $7.89 million. Mr. Lampert increased his stake by 1.35% to 28,383,471 shares with this purchase.

10% Owner Bruce R. Berkowitz acquired 13,800 shares, paying $20.75 per share for a total amount of $286,322.

It is interesting to see Mr. Lampert join Mr. Berkowitz in purchasing shares of Sears. We have seen Sears rally strongly following Mr. Lampert's purchases in the past but the stock then settles lower following disappointing operating performance at Sears.