9 ms·
SolarWinds’ shares drop 22 per cent. But what’s this? $286M in stock sales
- gruez 6y ago>There is a plausible explanation for all this: the VCs shed their stock-holdings on the same day SolarWinds' long-standing CEO resigned. >The software house announced in August that Kevin Thompson would leave the company though it didn’t give a date. Thompson reportedly quit on Monday, December 7 – news that was not made public – and a new CEO was formally announced two days later, on December 9, the day after FireEye went public on December 8 with details of the intrusion into its own systems. Why would a VC wait until the CEO resigns to dump their stock, if they already knew that he was leaving? Wouldn't it make more sense to slowly dump it over several weeks/months so you don't move the market? The "plausible explanation" sounds like a convenient excuse, imo.
- boh 6y agoBecause you'd get charged with insider trading if you do.
- spockz 6y agoWhat is the minimum amount of time that needs to pass between announcements and selling of stocks before it is not considered insider training anymore? 1s, 1 day?
- ddispaltro 6y agoThe moment the information is public.
- Closi 6y agoYou have to leave a reasonable amount of time to ensure that the information can be priced into the market.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThe market's made of computers reading press releases, so that's well under a second.
- im3w1l 6y agoThat's just the market's "gut reaction" so to speak.
- adeelk93 6y ago“A reasonable amount of time” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/traders-heard-a-speech-too-soon https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/trader...
- jkingsman 6y agoThere have been cases where it happens after a certain amount of time after the announcement, technically, but where there wasn't enough time for speed of light delay to get the information to the place where the trade was executed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/24/traders-may-have-gotten-last-weeks-fed-news-7-milliseconds-early/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/24/trade...
- Filligree 6y agoHmm. In that case it didn't happen after the announcement. If the events have space-like separation, then neither 'before' nor 'after' are valid descriptions. (And "simultaneously" is right out.) Good luck telling regulators this, I suppose...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vmception 6y agomilliseconds, nanoseconds if you can
- toast0 6y agoIt's pretty vague. I recall guidance of waiting for two trading days, but that seems pretty conservative. Otoh, who wants to have to argue it with the SEC.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vlovich123 6y ago> There is a plausible explanation for all this: the VCs shed their stock-holdings on the same day SolarWinds' long-standing CEO resigned Why is that even proposed as the end of the plausible explanation? Seems equally plausible that the CEO stepped down as a condition of not being blamed for gross incompetence (ie help whitewashing this taint on his record) while staying silent so that everyone (including him) gets a nice payday and can move on to some other area? There’s lots of possible explanations. Why not urge a full public accounting so that everyone can review if any wrongdoing took place?
- sonotmyname 6y ago> Seems equally plausible that the CEO stepped down as a condition of not being blamed for gross incompetence His departure was announced in August.
- vlovich123 6y agoWhy are you presuming that there weren’t warning signs of this being an issue, perhaps detected in July and then decided on the course of action by August with the public details of how bad it was starting to slowly trickle out. I recall reading a precursor news article before the details about SolarWinds coming out and that’s an external source from SolarWinds and the government agencies involved starting to get wind of the damage. It’s entirely possible the FBI was sleeping on the job too, so focused on electoral interference that blinded them to a different avenue of attack if it was indeed the Russians behind it. This indicates our government is wholly incompetent at securing our infrastructure. This is a drum beat warning I’ve heard since the 90s when I was a teenager. Our focus on offense rather than on industry wide defense means our IT culture is wide open to attack. That being said it’s also entirely possible this is broadly true but I have seen no evidence of America making attacks of this nature. Our attacks can be more devastating and technically accomplished, but I’ve seen no evidence of us having the ability and using it of making targeted quick strikes at an enemy’s interior weak spots as a constant source of irritation. We do things like Stuxnet or threatening Russia’s power grid for relatively cheaper attacks. Basically we try to fight a gun war with nukes and we don’t have any guns.
- exochrono 6y agoIt sure seems like every time bad news breaks about a company, there's an accompanying well-timed stock sale from an insider with a convenient excuse.
- mulmen 6y agoFunny how the human mind works. 1) Is $286m a lot? 2) How many insiders are there and what is normal behavior for them? 3) Are these well-timed sales abnormal or are we only looking because of the headlines? A quick read of this story doesn't seem to answer these questions.
- Sebguer 6y agoTheir market cap today is ~5.6B at $18 a share. Jumping back to December 7, they were worth $23, so ~7.3B market cap. So, close to 4% of outstanding shares.
- 0goel0 6y agoOutstanding is a bad metric. "Float" is a better one. SWI has 53 million floating shares, resulting in 53m*23= $1.2 billion today. So a quarter of float traded. That is crazy movement.
- Sebguer 6y agoAgreed this metric is better, but the article also notes that these two firms own 70% of SolarWinds so any meaningful sale would be large by this measure I think?
- rtx 6y agoMany times its just the stop loss being triggered.
- DevKoala 6y agoThese guys and the Pfizer CEO are champs at timing stock sales at the top.
- austinheap 6y agor/wallstreetbets has entered the chat
- MengerSponge 6y agoProbably not... I didn't see TSLA mentioned once in this article :)
- Sebguer 6y agoPfizer's CEO sold on November 9th, on a day the stock closed at $37.14. It peaked last week (the 8th) at $42.56, and closed today at $37.84, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
- validuser 6y agoHis trade was another pretty obvious inside trade (timed the announcement of their successful trials with the scheduled sale)
- Sebguer 6y agoIt was a sale that had been scheduled months previously, and it should by now be obvious that the trial really was successful!
- waheoo 6y agoYou think it's hard to schedule a well timed press release in a way that works in well with your predetermined share sales?
- wpietri 6y agoI don't know about this sale in specific, but isn't it a common trick for execs to schedule sales in advance and then cancel if it turns out not to be the right time to sell?
- k_sze 6y agoThe cynical side of me thinks that SolarWinds is only going to get a slap on the wrist for the recent security breach news. They’re too big to fail, especially during this ongoing pandemic. Sounds like a good time to pick up some SolarWinds stocks.
- h2odragon 6y agoA few more days of news coverage and they'll be the hot new cyber security stock everyone has heard of...
- rmrfstar 6y agoComodo is fine last I checked [1,2]. Congress should probably just listen to Dan Geer and establish products liability for closed-source software. I feel like this might have turned up sooner if there was a git diff to read. [1] https://blog.erratasec.com/2011/03/comodo-hacker-releases-his-manifesto.html https://blog.erratasec.com/2011/03/comodo-hacker-releases-hi... [2] https://www.comodo.com/news/comodo-ceo-entrepreneur-of-the-year-infosecurity-global-excellence-award/ https://www.comodo.com/news/comodo-ceo-entrepreneur-of-the-y...
- cinquemb 6y agoYeah, congress gonna pass a law limiting their liability from being sued, all holes fixed… lol
- dukeofdoom 6y agoInterestingly enough, since I no longer believe spin from the news. They claimed they were no using Orion on the dominion voting machines. CEO testified to it. What were they using? The screenshot of the login page shows the SolarWind logo. Anyone know which tool that was. https://www.dailydot.com/debug/solarwinds-hack-dominion-debunk/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/solarwinds-hack-dominion-debu...
- eddieplan9 6y agoDominion the company uses SolarWinds or Orion does not mean the voting system it develops uses SolarWinds or Orion. I am pretty sure Dominion also uses MS Office, but that does not mean the voting system is vulnerable to MS Office hacks.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThat all might be well and True. Except there also has been testimony that the voting machine do have the ability to connect to the internet. It was turned of during the vote counting. But I presume the connection to the internet is for the machines to connect to servers to download updates. So its not like a possible vector could not exist during these updates. If the company is compromised.
- nsonha 6y agoI was thinking "let's buy some of these" then I realized this is not a green energy firm.
- yudlejoza 6y agoCan anyone please comment on the totally bonkers name, bringing a bad rep to the solar and wind industry for no reason?
- kortilla 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
- dredmorbius 6y agoLooked good for a 2009 IPO? https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/solarwinds-beats-odds-with-public-offering/ https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/solarwinds-beats-o...
- rcpt 6y agoGiven that Equifax is still around this might be a good buy
- drspacemonkey 6y agoEquifax isn't just "still around". Their stock price is up nearly 50% from the day before their data breach crash.
- ceejayoz 6y agoDid they ever even pay out the $125 checks?
- perfunctory 6y agoI thought about this too at first. But there is a difference. The victims of the Equifax hack were not their customers. But you might still be right.
- TruthHurts44 6y agoGreat moment to buy SWI
- appleflaxen 6y agothis needs to be investigated
- _trampeltier 6y agoSeems they removed the customer list even on archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.solarwinds.com/company/customers https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.solarwinds.com/com...
- gregsadetsky 6y agoGood observation! It is still cached by Google: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2CZ1Lu0Qd00J:https://www.solarwinds.com/es/company/customers+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2CZ1Lu... And there's a pastebin of it: https://pastebin.pl/view/d91b2b30 https://pastebin.pl/view/d91b2b30 --- The Verge article on removing the customer list: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/15/22176053/solarwinds-hack-client-list-russia-orion-it-compromised https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/15/22176053/solarwinds-hack...
- ibeckermayer 6y agoHow did they manage to do that? I thought I’d seen it there a few days ago?
- gregsadetsky 6y agoYou can request for pages to be removed from archive.org: https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004651732-Using-The-Wayback-Machine https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004651732-Usin... see "How can I exclude or remove my site's pages from the Wayback Machine?" TLDR: if you email them and prove ownership of the domain, they will remove the archived content. Edit: I am finding the page on archive.org after all: https://web.archive.org/web/20201213230906/https://www.solarwinds.com/company/customers https://web.archive.org/web/20201213230906/https://www.solar...
- mitchelldeacon9 6y agoAttention value investors: recall Warren Buffett's aphorism that "A great investment opportunity occurs when a marvelous business encounters a one-time huge, but solvable, problem" (quoted from Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, Security Analysis). Considering the current economic environment, with a massive stock-market bubble and historically low interest rates, as well as the obvious demand for network security products and services, Solar Winds could be an excellent investment prospect - that is, once the shares get beaten down and the scandal begins to fade.
- finfun234 6y agoShareseer captured these transactions in real time https://shareseer.com/insiders?q=SOLARWINDS+CORP https://shareseer.com/insiders?q=SOLARWINDS+CORP
- troydavis 6y agoSolarWinds filed an 8-K report with the SEC[1] stating that they first learned about this after these sales closed: > On Saturday, December 12, our CEO was advised by an executive at FireEye of a security vulnerability in our Orion Software Platform which was the result of avery sophisticated cyberattack on SolarWinds. That timeline also matches FireEye's statements and disclosures. Since negotiating these sales takes time, it's likely that weeks elapsed between the negotiations and SolarWinds learning of this on Dec. 12. [1]: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001739942/6dd04fe2-7d10-4632-89f1-eb8f932f6e94.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001739942/6dd04fe...