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I don't know nearly as much about stock as most people on this site, so bear with me because I have a potentially dumb question. I agree that the timing of the
by phaus 9y ago
I don't know nearly as much about stock as most people on this site, so bear with me because I have a potentially dumb question.
I agree that the timing of these sales looks really bad. However, I've heard that these guys are executives with an enormous amount of stock and the sales were for a small percentage of their overall stake. If they were intentionally breaking the law to avoid losses, wouldn't they sell all or most if it? Was most of their stock not vested and they just dumped what already vested? Or is the claim that it was a small percentage of their stock not true?
- 1mike12 9y agoIt's not as if there's an amount X you can sell less of where it's totally fine, but if you go over, you're in trouble. Nobody would be dumb enough to sell their entire position, but at the same time, if you did have insider knowledge, you wouldn't want to have all your position tank. So what do you do? You could go a little bit in the middle and claim ignorance. Trading based off of insider knowledge is illegal regardless of the amount of trades, but in practice obviously the government only chases after egregious cases.
- oconnor663 9y agoI think the idea of the question is, if you're talking about the difference between losing 50% of your value (doing nothing), and losing 49% of your value (making a small illegal trade), would it make sense to expose yourself to criminal liability for that 1%, even if that 1% represents a lot of money in absolute terms?