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Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

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Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#141

Post by rasz »

qqtt wrote: post #2

I'm not sure if this is standard for SEC press releases, but why do they include details such as, "he was a school teacher" and, "he owed gambling debts"? I've always suspected the SEC investigations regarding things like insider trading are typically the opposite of justice and designed to go after the smallest possible players while giving the illusion of enforcement. And these details in an allegedly serious inves…

Would you prefer "he wasnt sufficiently politically connected" and "his family never made friends in the right circles"

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#142

Post by BeFlatXIII »

wpietri wrote: post #45
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stock market should be an honest unregulated casino. Don’t invest if you can’t afford to lose it all should be the name of the game.

It really shouldn't. At a societal level, the point of having a stock market at all is to increase the amount of investment capital available. An unregulated market where people are at significant risk of big losses due to crime, fraud, etc is one that will not attract nearly as much capital. Less investment capital means less growth and a poorer society. As proof that regulation is valuable, look at all of the forei…

Fair point on the marketplace of marketplaces. Using taxpayer dollars and prisons to enforce a transparent and accountable market still rubs me the wrong way. Outright fraud (eg. a dishonest broker pocketing the $100 instead of purchasing the stock for his client), I have no problems prosecuting with the full force of the government. It’s the rules that provide an illusion of being something other than buyer beware that I chafe at the idea of government intervention.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#144

Post by rdtwo »

clipradiowallet wrote: post #132
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only people who like it are the people high status enough to not be subject to it Everyone at the SEC is keenly aware that bagging a high-ranking financier is a ticket to higher office.

> Everyone at the SEC is keenly aware that bagging a high-ranking financier is a ticket to higher office. Just speculating here, but I imagine everyone at the SEC is also aware that going after someone with 9-figures-and-higher wealth may not be cut and dry. At those levels, the person you are going after can wreck your [and all your colleagues] lives in new and interesting ways that aren't apparent.

That’s why they go after 7 and 8 figure guys they are way easier to pick off but still juicy

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#145

Post by kosievdmerwe »

fallingknife wrote: post #137
elliekelly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a call last week about the SEC’s changing priorities under Chairperson Gensler and the consensus among all of the attorneys on the call was that they will be more data-driven and have already been using data analytics far more extensively than ever before. I suspect the case in the linked release came about from those efforts: > “Using sophisticated data analysis, the SEC was able to uncover this insider tra…

As you can see from the details here, they hardly needed "sophisticated analysis:" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-16/don-t-...

After they knew who to investigate it likely was easy, but I don't see how they discovered who to investigate in the article you linked.

You need some way to detect smoke before you can go looking for the fire. And given the large number of trades in the US stock markets, I don't believe this is an easy problem.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#146

Post by elliekelly »

fallingknife wrote: post #137
elliekelly wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a call last week about the SEC’s changing priorities under Chairperson Gensler and the consensus among all of the attorneys on the call was that they will be more data-driven and have already been using data analytics far more extensively than ever before. I suspect the case in the linked release came about from those efforts: > “Using sophisticated data analysis, the SEC was able to uncover this insider tra…

As you can see from the details here, they hardly needed "sophisticated analysis:" https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-16/don-t-...

Levine’s analysis is regarding to the evidence gathered from the investigation while the statement from the press release refers to whether or not a group of transactions warranted investigation in the first place. The “sophisticated analysis” the SEC refers to is akin to an if statement while the evidence set forth in the complaint (and referenced by Levine) is the result of running “then investigate” when $isSuspicious returned true.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#147

Post by acuozzo »

clipradiowallet wrote: post #132
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only people who like it are the people high status enough to not be subject to it Everyone at the SEC is keenly aware that bagging a high-ranking financier is a ticket to higher office.

> Everyone at the SEC is keenly aware that bagging a high-ranking financier is a ticket to higher office. Just speculating here, but I imagine everyone at the SEC is also aware that going after someone with 9-figures-and-higher wealth may not be cut and dry. At those levels, the person you are going after can wreck your [and all your colleagues] lives in new and interesting ways that aren't apparent.

> At those levels, the person you are going after can wreck your [and all your colleagues] lives in new and interesting ways that aren't apparent.

Which is exactly why having that much wealth should be impossible or illegal. No single person should have that much power.

With that being said, who am I kidding? It's obvious that the old forms of power haven't gone away and never will.

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#148

Post by nphard85 »

Curious about this scenario:

Bob works for company A which is a vendor for companies B, C and D. Most of company A's revenue stream is dependent on how well B, C and D are doing. Bob has insider knowledge of Company A's finances using which he trades stocks of B, C and D.

Is this considered insider trading or not?

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#149

Post by throwaway0a5e »

johntb86 wrote: post #116
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #49

> Brown ... repeatedly tipped ... to his best friend Wylam ... Wylam ... traded on this information and also tipped Sood .. Sood traded on this information and tipped his three friends also illegally traded on the information. (edited for brevity) So it sounds like Brown texted his bestie something he shouldn't have. Bestie then passed it on to people who made lot of money on it. The SEC, through some combination of…

The SEC complaint mentions this: > On August 5, 2016, Brown—whose tips enabled his friend, Wylam, to make nearly one million dollars—texted his then-girlfriend to inform her that he was going to Wylam’s house to, among other things, “talk to him about $.” One week later, on or around August 12, Brown took a photograph of numerous one hundred dollar bills spread across his bathroom sink. > On or about October 10, 2016…

That makes much more sense. Where did you find the full text of the facts the government alleges?

Re: Six charged in Silicon Valley insider trading ring

#150

Post by byset »

version_five wrote: post #139
byset wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SEC pursued junk bond pioneer Michael Milken in the 1980s, Ivan Boesky before that… unsure of specifics of SEC personnel getting to “high office” because of that but seems obvious that high profile successful prosecutions would be career-making (Granted those examples are from the 80s but i would think there are more recent examples…) Milken was prosecuted by Rudy Giuliani which didn’t hurt Giuliani’s career, but Rud…

Milken's prosecution didnt really hurt his career much either. Hes still a billionaire (and if I remember right, his brother did very well too). PS - read Den of Thieves again - there is an imo strong parallel between what was going on with junk bonds in the 80s and what is happening now with VC money. When Milken was indicted, he couldn't keep all the balls in the air anymore and the whole thing fell apart. I'm very…

Didn’t hurt his career much? He was barred from the securities industry forever. Sure he had a lot of money left, but how can you know where his career would go if he weren’t prosecuted? That’s like saying that if Bill Gates were forced to cash out of Microsoft in the 80s it wouldn’t have affected his career much because, after all, he would still be a billionaire
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