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Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

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11–20 of 302 posts

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#11
post #9

I'm sure the SEC has an array of tools with which to comb through the data, but I would bet that the vast majority of these cases against non-professional traders are flagged by identifying retail brokerage accounts where the notional value of options outstanding is 1) larger than some % of the the portfolio size (e.g. > 50%) 2) with exposure concentrated on 1-3 stocks 3) with no similarly-sized follow-up trades in o…

uhm it’s not even that difficult. they just see if you traded in your own account for a company you work for around earnings.

i’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to do it at all but maybe dependent on the situation.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#12
post #5

All insider trading should be legal. Imagine the opposite case. You know your company is doing poorly but the government forces you to not sell your stock and take a loss.

It's only illegal if you're using secret information. The company can't report info to some shareholders and not others.

In my example the company is not reporting to any shareholders. You are doing trades based off of information that you have collected yourself.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#13
post #9

I'm sure the SEC has an array of tools with which to comb through the data, but I would bet that the vast majority of these cases against non-professional traders are flagged by identifying retail brokerage accounts where the notional value of options outstanding is 1) larger than some % of the the portfolio size (e.g. > 50%) 2) with exposure concentrated on 1-3 stocks 3) with no similarly-sized follow-up trades in o…

> I'm sure the SEC has an array of tools with which to comb through the data

They have a fairly robust analytics/data science team, and will also act on referrals from FINRA related to suspicious/anomalous trade activity.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#14
post #6

All insider trading should be legal. Imagine the opposite case. You know your company is doing poorly but the government forces you to not sell your stock and take a loss.

if you are in the position of knowing secret data of a publicly traded company, and you are uncomfortable with the position of possibly losing money because you can not act on the secret data, I would suggest you not hold stock for companies you know secret data about No insider trading should not be legal

>I would suggest you not hold stock for companies you know secret data about

I imagine the way this works out for non-idiot inside traders, is that their cousin or close friend holds the stock instead. Insider trading is really only discoverable when performed by the stupid or complacent.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#15
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only illegal if you're using secret information. The company can't report info to some shareholders and not others.

In my example the company is not reporting to any shareholders. You are doing trades based off of information that you have collected yourself.

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Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#17
post #2

I can’t understand the rationale behind blowing up your life and career in which you made $300k+/year for a tiny $1m gain split between 3 people and their families. Why are people who should otherwise be much smarter than this doing incredibly dumb things? Just greed? and entitlement?

> Why are people who should otherwise be much smarter than this

Being smart at your job doesn't mean you aren't ignorant. In fact, I'd say the culture of equating "good at computers" meaning you are probably "smarter than this" does more to shield us from the truth of our own ignorance.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#18
post #10
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you are in the position of knowing secret data of a publicly traded company, and you are uncomfortable with the position of possibly losing money because you can not act on the secret data, I would suggest you not hold stock for companies you know secret data about No insider trading should not be legal

Something I was always curious about, but I lack the legal background to find the answer. What if public information showed that you should sell the stock, but you decide to hold it instead (i.e., not do anything at all) because you have insider information that the company will be doing much better than expected? The "not selling" part (assuming you bought stock prior to having insider knowledge) is a form of inside…

Not a lawyer but holding should always be fine. No trading is happening therefore it's not insider trading.

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#19
post #9

I'm sure the SEC has an array of tools with which to comb through the data, but I would bet that the vast majority of these cases against non-professional traders are flagged by identifying retail brokerage accounts where the notional value of options outstanding is 1) larger than some % of the the portfolio size (e.g. > 50%) 2) with exposure concentrated on 1-3 stocks 3) with no similarly-sized follow-up trades in o…

> I'm sure the SEC has an array of tools with which to comb through the data They have a fairly robust analytics/data science team, and will also act on referrals from FINRA related to suspicious/anomalous trade activity.

isn’t this what they use Palantir for?

Re: Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

#20

When is the announcement happening for the members of congress that made investments in key areas after they were briefed on covid-19 and potential impact? > We are a free market economy. They should be able to participate in that

Insider trading requires privileged access to inside information. Covid impacts to society are not inside/internal data to those companies, those briefings were happening when it was obvious we were having a global pandemic to anyone paying attention.

The inputs to the deductive reasoning process were public information.

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