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Twilio employees, associates charged with insider trading by SEC

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

#111

Post by kilroy123 »

rosndo wrote: post #54
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #48

I work in billing software for a publicly traded software company and this is a constant temptation. I'm never gonna do it because I'm not gonna blow up my career for a relative pittance, but I can't tell you how many times I've been annoyed that I couldn't act on private information and make ~$100k or so. These guys are like the kids who saw the Tide Pod challenges and decided to actually eat the pods. I bet insider…

> These guys are like the kids who saw the Tide Pod challenges and decided to actually eat the pods. I bet insider trading is not as fun when you're unemployed and bankrupt. Most insider traders are never caught, everyone eating tide pods gets sick.

My suspicions are many on Wall Street do it.

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

#112

Post by decebalus1 »

xyst wrote: post #27

This is a proud win in the SEC handbook? $1 million dollars is fucking chump change. Whales do this on a 1000X scale every fucking day (yes billions). They even collaborate amongst other trading firms to pump and dump. Where's the prosecution related to the GME + Citadel Securities + Melvin Capital illegal naked short selling? Remember when this group was hemorrhaging billions of dollars and forced RH to remove the "…

Prosecuting whales is both super expensive and risky to the conviction rate. See https://www.npr.org/2017/07/30/535799735/corporate-bungling-...

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

#113

Post by ffggvv »

rosndo wrote: post #54
kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #48

I work in billing software for a publicly traded software company and this is a constant temptation. I'm never gonna do it because I'm not gonna blow up my career for a relative pittance, but I can't tell you how many times I've been annoyed that I couldn't act on private information and make ~$100k or so. These guys are like the kids who saw the Tide Pod challenges and decided to actually eat the pods. I bet insider…

> These guys are like the kids who saw the Tide Pod challenges and decided to actually eat the pods. I bet insider trading is not as fun when you're unemployed and bankrupt. Most insider traders are never caught, everyone eating tide pods gets sick.

my guess is if they did everything via in person discussions and didnt leave a paper trail of messages, they likely wouldnt have been caught

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

kieselguhr_kid wrote: post #48

I work in billing software for a publicly traded software company and this is a constant temptation. I'm never gonna do it because I'm not gonna blow up my career for a relative pittance, but I can't tell you how many times I've been annoyed that I couldn't act on private information and make ~$100k or so. These guys are like the kids who saw the Tide Pod challenges and decided to actually eat the pods. I bet insider…

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by ffggvv »

guidovranken wrote: post #68

> On several occasions between late March and early May 2020, before Twilio’s public earnings announcement, Sure, Lagudu and Chotu Pulagam used internal chat channels to discuss in Telugu whether Twilio might exceed market expectations in its quarterly report of earnings, due in May 2020. They concluded that Twilio’s stock price would “rise for sure” after the quarterly results were announced publicly. https://www.se…

probably or they wouldnt have used telugu. maybe assuming it would be harder to get caught

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

#116

Post by willcipriano »

hodgesrm wrote: post #101
bidirectional wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legalising insider trading is the simplest solution.

It depends on your definition of the problem. The problem I would like to solve is ensuring that everyone perceives the market as fair, i.e., not tilted toward parties with access to privileged information.

> not tilted toward parties with access to privileged information.

With the exception of Congress of course.

Reverse insider trading is also fine, you can announce buybacks right before a preplanned stock sale.

It would be simpler to say if you aren't friends with someone invited to Epstein island you aren't allowed to insider trade but the plebs would get uppity.

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

#117

Post by Anon1096 »

broknbottle wrote: post #16

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 as the law currently is written is about theft of company secrets for private gain. Knowing what is going on in the world is not stealing information from any particular company.

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

#118

Post by jeromegv »

ramesh31 wrote: post #90
extr wrote: post #8

What a lame way to insider trade. I thought that instance of the Capital One analysts using internal database queries to understand which retailers were having good quarters was far more interesting and insidious. Similarly you could imagine a lot more subtle ways to leverage insider Twilio information (count of verification texts sent by client?) to make far more obscure bets. The SEC definitely takes a look at anyo…

>I thought that instance of the Capital One analysts using internal database queries to understand which retailers were having good quarters was far more interesting and insidious. How is this seriously different than what any one of a million other "AI analytics" companies are doing with customer data right now?

It was an internal database (from Capital One credit cards), they weren't allowed to use that data for analysis. This wasn't publicly accessible information.

See article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-01-23/capita...

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

#119

Post by ethbr0 »

toast0 wrote: post #97
sidewndr46 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or set up a pre-defined share sale plan in one of these windows, covering the future, and don't touch it. The insider trading training I did at one company specifically mentioned this is against SEC rules and is insider trading. I am unsure if that is actually true, but that is what the company expected us to operate as.

Setting up a 10b5-1 plan with your broker when you don't have material, non-public information, and your broker follows the plan is the way to trade in employer stock with a solid footing if you regularly have material non-public information. (Such as, in this case, a major change in business metrics). Your company may not permit regular employees to setup a 10b5-1 plan, I think they need signof by corporate legal; a…

IANAL, but a 10b5-1 plan (thanks for reminding me of the naming!) is an affirmative defense, that removes insider trading liability if a trade satisfies all of its conditions.

Effectively, (1) the plan is created when one does not have material nonpublic information, (2) that it...

"- Specified the amount of securities to be purchased or sold, price, and date;

- Provided a written formula or algorithm, or computer program, for determining amounts, prices, and dates; or

- Did not permit the person to exercise any subsequent influence over how, when, or whether to effect purchases or sales; provided, in addition, that any other person who exercised such influence was not aware of the material nonpublic information when doing so." [0]

... and (3) that the trade as executed did not attempt to subvert (2).

So it's not really something you need to have your corporate legal agree to for it to be valid (although legal may require or encourage you to do so, to limit exposure of company officers botching it). You simply have to set up a plan that satisfies the test with your broker, then claim it as your defense if the SEC comes after you.

A note on a napkin saying "Sell 5,000 shares 3 days before every earnings call, as long as the RSI is >50" would seem to suffice, provided you didn't subsequently meddle.

[0] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/15/2022-01...

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