Welcome to edition 233 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying decreased last week with insiders buying $44.02 million of stock compared to $59.33 million in the week prior. Selling also declined with insiders selling $1.47 billion of stock last week compared to $1.73 billion in the week prior.
With the energy sector in turmoil on account of falling oil prices, it was interesting to see several insider purchases this week that were related to the energy sector. We saw buying in everything from oil exploration companies to companies that provide services or materials to the industry. Several of these stocks have lost more than half their value this year and it is possible that these insiders are early as we saw with the insiders of Noble (NE), who saw the stock drop nearly 50% following their purchases earlier this year.
Two of these energy sector related stocks (OCIP and HCLP) made the list of top 5 purchases this week. Others that did not make the list include Transocean (RIG), Continental Resources (CLR), Jones Energy (JONE), DXP Enterprises (DXPE), EP Energy Corp (EPE) and Mid-Con Energy Partners (MCEP) just to name a few.
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 33.47. In other words, insiders sold more than 33 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 29.22. 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 December 5, 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. SFX Entertainment Inc. (SFXE): $4.41
Shares of this live events and digital entertainment producer were acquired by 2 insiders:
