The argument that his sales might’ve violated insider trading rules is puerile, populist, and patently absurd. The whole point of having pre-arranged stock sale

The argument that his sales might’ve violated insider trading rules is puerile, populist, and patently absurd. The whole point of having pre-arranged stock sale plans is precisely this: so that execution of them does not leak any information whatsoever into the market. Think about it: if he had a pre-arranged plan and didn’t sell because he feared running afoul of insider trading rules ahead of a drop, it would have alerted other investors to the fact that something that spooked him was going on, and they would have preempted the unknown risk and rushed for the exit, crashing the stock. In short, his is precisely why CEOs insist on these pre-arranged plans to make their stock grants and stock options valuable without causing them to incur the damoclean sword of being ’allowed’ to monetise only when they have absolute certainty that none of the no doubt innumerable problems they are aware of and paid to manage will leave negative impacts on stock valuations (meaning: never, making their stock worthless). There’s nothing to see here.