Welcome to edition 279 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased last week with insiders buying $50.95 million of stock compared to $24.71 million in the week prior. Selling also increased with insiders selling $417.9 million of stock last week compared to $295.56 million in the week prior. Insider transactions are likely to stay muted over the next week or two as we get into the thick of earnings season.

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 down to 8.2. In other words, insiders sold more than 8 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 11.96. 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 October 23, 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. Wynn Resorts Ltd. (WYNN): $67.6

Director Ray R. Irani acquired 40,000 shares of this resorts & casinos operator, paying $67.99 per share for a total amount of $2.72 million. Mr. Irani increased his stake by 575.46% to 46,951 shares with this purchase.

Wynn Resorts is down more than 63% over the last year as gambling activity declined in Las Vegas and dropped sharply in Macau. With revenue down 3.9% in Vegas and 37.9% in Macau, adjusted EBITDA was down 39% in the third quarter of 2015 when compared to the same quarter last year. Wynn Resorts generated nearly 60% of its $996.3 million in Q3 revenue from Macau. A Chinese government crackdown on corruption combined with slowing growth in China arecontributing to the decline in Macau operations for Wynn.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Wynn Resorts Ltd. here.