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Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

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Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great, and as good a place as any for the thread to sprawl from, so I'll ask: it depends on how you know the stock is going to shoot up the next day, right? Trading on private information isn't illegal, and there's a huge variety of ways to acquire private information at varying levels of confidence, and in a sense the purpose of the markets is to aggregate everyone's private information to estimate a price.…

> Say you're, like, an employee at DataDog, and you're involved in a long-term M&A discussion with Cisco that you know is competitive (I've had the pleasure of witnessing one of these at Arbor Networks). Things are looking great, you've picked up a bunch of strong signals that Cisco is definitely going to make a move, and then: the talks fall apart. I don't know about the law, but where I work insider trading policie…

In the hypothetical, though, Cisco is neither a vendor or a supplier to Datadog.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Say you're, like, an employee at DataDog, and you're involved in a long-term M&A discussion with Cisco that you know is competitive (I've had the pleasure of witnessing one of these at Arbor Networks). Things are looking great, you've picked up a bunch of strong signals that Cisco is definitely going to make a move, and then: the talks fall apart. I don't know about the law, but where I work insider trading policie…

In the hypothetical, though, Cisco is neither a vendor or a supplier to Datadog.

I mean, given Cisco's line of business, there's a high chance they are a supplier to a company like DataDog.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the typical case, you can continue to collect those pennies. Top notch comment, considering options trading is often described as "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller." > Loss aversion and all that, but it feels like a reasonable strategy where you still come out ahead in the worst case You don't come out ahead in the worst case – the option you wrote can settle deep ITM and you are compelled to sell a…

> You don't come out ahead in the worst case But you were offering it based on the market price when you offered it. The "loss" is merely one of opportunity, you're not actually losing any value you had when you sold the option, right?

If you sold the option and don't hold the stock then you are exposed to essentially uncapped losses.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#334
post #329
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's 260 options, but I wrote "26k" as it's the right to buy 26k shares (1 option for 100 shares), for consistency with the parents who wrote 550k, meaning 5500 options to buy 550k shares.

Correcting an error with an error, even for the sake of consistency, just perpetuates confusion. The average person probably doesn't even know what an option is, and your post could be read in multiple ways. He bought 26k options? 26k shares? $26k of either?

Ok, I agree with you.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't come out ahead in the worst case But you were offering it based on the market price when you offered it. The "loss" is merely one of opportunity, you're not actually losing any value you had when you sold the option, right?

If you sold the option and don't hold the stock then you are exposed to essentially uncapped losses.

[deleted]

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't come out ahead in the worst case But you were offering it based on the market price when you offered it. The "loss" is merely one of opportunity, you're not actually losing any value you had when you sold the option, right?

If you sold the option and don't hold the stock then you are exposed to essentially uncapped losses.

Listed scenario started by saying you own SPLK.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does out of the money mean?

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042715/what-differe... Out of the money call options are long shots, you'd loose money to buy the stock today via the option vs just buying on the open market.

Ah that makes sense, thank you!

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#339

My neighbor works for Spunk and asked me on Sept 10th if I can refer him. I guess some people knew something like this is happening soon. Background: He's full remote and Cisco is known for being against that.

I'm full remote at Meraki and they've been very supportive of remote.

Re: Insider trade on Splunk acquisition?

#340
post #6

Obviously I don't condone insider trading, but it's nice to see someone go all in and make some real money. If you're going to risk jail time, you might as well do it for life-changing amounts of cash. Contrast this with Stephen Buyer who's going to trial and may well end up in jail for a piddly few $100k.

Would I be able to see such a trade when the trader makes them and just copy the trade with a small amount.

Thinking is: „Who the hell would make such a trade if he doesn’t have some information, let’s do the same“

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