Welcome to edition 232 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $59.33 million of stock compared to $68.12 million in the week prior. Selling increased a little with insiders selling $1.73 billion of stock last week compared to $1.69 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 29.22. In other words, insiders sold  more than 29 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 24.94. 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 November 28, 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. Air Products & Chemicals Inc. (APD): $143.83

Chairman, President and CEO Seifi Ghasemi acquired 30,000 shares of this supplier of industrial gases and performance material, paying $144.67 per share for a total amount of $4.34 million. Mr. Ghasemi increased his stake by 29.99% to 130,026 shares with this purchase.

This is the second week in a row we have seen large purchases by Mr. Ghasemi.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Air Products & Chemicals Inc. here.

P/E: 31.19 Forward P/E: 19.95 Industry P/E: 18.76 P/S: 2.97 Price/Book: 4.21 EV/EBITDA: 14.03 Market Cap: $30.74B Avg. Daily Volume: 1,931,700 52 Week Range: $102.73 – $146.46

2. Rex Energy Corporation (REXX): $7.02

Shares of this oil & gas exploration company were acquired by 3 insiders:

Director Lance T. Shaner acquired 487,800 shares, paying $8.78 per share for a total amount of $4.28 million. Mr. Shaner increased his stake by 17.89% to 3,214,685 shares with this purchase. 243,900 of these shares were purchased indirectly through trusts.

Chief Accounting Officer Curtis J. Walker acquired 2,000 shares, paying $8.27 per share for a total amount of $16,540. Mr. Walker increased his stake by 3.79% to 54,755 shares with this purchase.

Director John A. Lombardi acquired 1,000 shares, paying $8.64 per share for a total amount of $8,640. Mr. Lombardi increased his stake by 2.76% to 37,292 shares with this purchase.