Insider buying dropped significantly last week with insiders buying $55.32 million of stock compared to $226.99 million in the week prior. Selling also declined with insiders selling $489.91 million of stock last week compared to $594.85 million 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 8.85. In other words, insiders sold almost 9 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares unfavorably with the prior week, when the ratio stood at 2.62. 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 9, 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. New York REIT, Inc. (NYRT): $10.84

Director Marc J. Rowan acquired 234,948 shares of this commercial REIT, paying $10.61 per share for a total amount of $2.49 million. These shares were purchased indirectly through MJR Funding LLC.

Mr. Rowan is a co-founder and Senior Managing Director of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management (APO).

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for New York REIT, Inc. here.

2. Conns Inc. (CONN): $24.48

Shares of this specialty retailer of home appliances were acquired by 2 insiders: