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Greed is a wild thing! Reading through the SEC complaint while he was a very senior executive, he was a very amateur trader. The risk-analysis in hindsight ak
by aresant 8y ago
Greed is a wild thing!
Reading through the SEC complaint while he was a very senior executive, he was a very amateur trader.
The risk-analysis in hindsight aka - why risk jail / fines / everything to avoid a $350k loss on $10m+ of shares - is stupid.
But I'd say he clearly overestimated the risk / reward in a very amateur / fear based way.
For instance in one session, he bought ~$1.1m of stock expecting a large pop, and then sold a few days later for a net profit of only $4,500!
That should cover about an hour of his current legal bills.
Lots more detail in the actual complaint:
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2019/comp-pr2019-10.pdf https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2019/comp-pr2019-1...
Eg:
- Oversaw their entire corporate law division of 30 - 50 - "Levoff was responsible for Apple’s compliance with securities laws, including providing legal advice in connection with Apple’s SEC filings and financial reporting . . . "
- Apple had a long standing "blackout" policy where insiders were cautioned NOT to trade at all that he clearly ignored / broke multiple times. Including after he sent the blackout notice updated with "the first sentence of Levoff’s February 24, 2011 email stated: “REMEMBER, TRADING IS NOT PERMITTED, WHETHER OR NOT IN AN OPEN TRADING WINDOW, IF YOU POSSESS OR HAVE ACCESS TO MATERIAL INFORMATION THAT HAS NOT BEEN DISCLOSED PUBLICLY.”
- djohnston 8y agoweird that he could trade at all in the blackout window. my brokerage won't let me execute any trades (for relevant asset) during our window
- elliekelly 8y agoThis stood out to me as well. Most major brokerage firms will not only blackout employee trading of public stock as you've mentioned but will also report transactions to the company's compliance department so the data can be reviewed for potential insider trading activity.
- refurb 8y agoDo you mean the firm that manages the retirement plan or incentive comp? Or brokerage firms in general? I don't think my personal brokerage firms knows who I work for.
- lotsofpulp 8y agoAll the accounts I’ve opened have asked me for employer’s name and asked me to certify if I was in position to know confidential financials.
- refurb 8y agoInteresting! I've never seen that, but maybe it's more recent? I haven't opened an account in over a decade.
- elliekelly 8y agoMost brokerage firms will ask if you work for a public company or a FINRA-registered firm at account opening. If you didn't directly tell them you're employed by one it's still safe to assume they've gathered the information from your direct deposit information or from source-of-funds information sharing with your other financial institutions. If you work for a FINRA-registered firm they'll send a letter to your employer asking if they'd like your transaction information to be added to the data feed. I'm guessing they can facilitate the same for publicly traded companies and their employees but I've only ever worked on the financial firm side of things so I don't know for sure. Scary huh?
- refurb 8y agoThanks for sharing! I had no idea that information sharing happened. I have seen the FINRA question when opening accounts now that you mention it.
- usefulcat 8y agoMaybe he used a brokerage account that he opened prior to working for Apple?
- scarejunba 8y agoEtrade through where I worked wouldn’t do it. This seems like something that should be tool protected tbh.
- toephu2 8y agoMaybe he used a personal brokerage account not tied to the Apple shares he recv'd from being an employee. That brokage being TD Ameritrade. Anyone here work at Apple? What brokerage does the company use to deposit your RSUs?
- astatine85 8y agoNot TD Ameritrade, which is likely why that's where the trades weren't blocked.
- pseudolus 8y agoIt's not always greed, sometimes it's desperation and I don't say that with any sympathy. When you're surrounded by wealthy people with wealthy spending habits you, sometimes, tend to mirror their spending habits to your own detriment. Unfortunately, "keeping up with the Joneses" is a real thing.
- mzs 8y ago"Don't spend money you don't have to impress people you don't like."
- segmondy 8y agoCall it any thing you want it's greed. I can understand a developer with $100k worth of stocks trading in desperation because they want to pay off their student loan or buy a house. But this guy had around $10 million. What desperation?
- irrational 8y agoThose yachts don't buy themselves you know!
- therealforsen 8y agoSomeone who's not a developer with student loan debt might call that greed as well. We are all very sympathetic to ourselves.
- segmondy 8y agoVery true. :-) It's all greed.
- tw04 8y agoAnd yet there's been countless studies about the point at which money stops being about comfort and it's ~$140k/year. At about $200k a year in most of the country and I'll go so far as to say $500k/year in the valley, if you are struggling with money you are being extremely stupid with it. At $10 million you could instantly retire and lead an upper middle class lifestyle off the interest alone in 90% of the country.