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> If you work in tech you know more than the average wall street trader about tech companies especially the one you work at. Whoa, be careful with the one you

> If you work in tech you know more than the average wall street trader about tech companies especially the one you work at. Whoa, be careful with the one you work at. There are often insider trading rules governing when and how you can buy/sell shares of your own company and derivatives involving them.

KMag 11y ago
In addition to the legal considerations, note that if your employer goes through layoffs, your investment is likely to tank right at the moment you need it most. You're already have natural long exposure to your employer's performance. Be aware that investing in your employer is a doubling-down on their performance. You also likely have some emotional investment in your career, which likely biases your judgement. On the other hand, you may have industry insight that the market simply doesn't have. While working for Google, shortly after Google announced Android, I wasn't sure if HTC, Apple, or some third manufacturer was going to become dominant in the smartphone market, but I was sure Intel was going to be playing catch-up in the mobile space for at least 5 years and smartphones were going to eat the world. I also knew the huge amounts of money per year that my employer was spending on datacenter electricity and saw that for many server workloads, watts/SPECINT and watts/flop aren't terribly important. The CPU largely (oversimplification) configures DMA between the disk controller and the network card, and there was a window of opportunity for ARM to get significant market share in the server space. This was before HP or Dell announced any of their ARM server projects or I had heard of Calxeda. The server thing didn't work out for ARM, but my investment in ARM Holdings still went up over 8x over 5 years or so. I no longer think I have any more insight than the market into ARM Holdings's share price, but I was able to profit from insight I had at the time that the average trader did not.
edanm 11y ago
Not sure, but I think those rules generally exempt (non-executive) employees, so generally speaking it's not a problem.
- Blackthorn 11y ago
  Non-executive employees are absolutely not exempt.

KMag 11y ago

In addition to the legal considerations, note that if your employer goes through layoffs, your investment is likely to tank right at the moment you need it most. You're already have natural long exposure to your employer's performance. Be aware that investing in your employer is a doubling-down on their performance. You also likely have some emotional investment in your career, which likely biases your judgement. On the other hand, you may have industry insight that the market simply doesn't have. While working for Google, shortly after Google announced Android, I wasn't sure if HTC, Apple, or some third manufacturer was going to become dominant in the smartphone market, but I was sure Intel was going to be playing catch-up in the mobile space for at least 5 years and smartphones were going to eat the world. I also knew the huge amounts of money per year that my employer was spending on datacenter electricity and saw that for many server workloads, watts/SPECINT and watts/flop aren't terribly important. The CPU largely (oversimplification) configures DMA between the disk controller and the network card, and there was a window of opportunity for ARM to get significant market share in the server space. This was before HP or Dell announced any of their ARM server projects or I had heard of Calxeda. The server thing didn't work out for ARM, but my investment in ARM Holdings still went up over 8x over 5 years or so. I no longer think I have any more insight than the market into ARM Holdings's share price, but I was able to profit from insight I had at the time that the average trader did not.

edanm 11y ago

Not sure, but I think those rules generally exempt (non-executive) employees, so generally speaking it's not a problem.

Blackthorn 11y ago
Non-executive employees are absolutely not exempt.