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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

#51
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife owns a small retail clothing store. It is her experience that the people who attempt to steal, are not generally lower income, they are often among the most well-to-do members of the population that goes through her store. Very different stakes, and very different age group (she mostly sells to teenagers and twentysomethings), but same psychology, I think. "I'm not the sort of person who gets arrested and sen…

I call this the "National Park effect". Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present. See: tourists who wander off in National Parks with no cell service, with no water or survival gear, and then think it's a good idea to pet a bison The concept of laying bleeding, miles from the nearest road, with broken bones, as nig…

>Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present.

It will be interesting to see this happen nationwide if the music were to stop(or slow down) in the US economy as some are predicting.

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

#53

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

To clarify, “Insider Trading”, the criminal charge, requires a contract with the company or fiduciary duty with the company not to trade on nonpublic information or disclose something nonpublic + the receiver trade on it, as a prerequisite to getting charged by the insider trading police (SEC + DOJ).

Thats the reason for this line in indictment summary:

> The SEC’s complaint alleges that despite receiving a company policy that prohibited them from insider trading

There would be no case without it (but NDAs or trade secret policies or a clause present in most employment contracts would cover it)

In any case, When only receiving a tip, the obligations of the receiver is still unclear. Maybe they can trade, maybe they cant.

(As there is no actual federal law on insider trading in the US and the SEC has made it up through court cases over time.)

They use their general fraud statute, as well as prior remaining case law that slightly went in their favor, because they lose in court a lot.

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

#54

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.

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

#55
post #21
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not supposed to do that at all. You could argue you didn't possess any material non-public information, but since essentially every internal document you access is non-public information, that's probably not an argument you want to deal with. Just trade your own company's shares in the windows after earnings releases. Or set up a pre-defined share sale plan in one of these windows, covering the future, and don…

> 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.

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

#56

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…

[Edited to remove harsh phrasing]. Consider this: there is no upside from this comment and quite a bit of potential (although likely low probability) downside.

Being tempted and acting on those temptations are two different things. There is nothing damning in this comment. I appreciate the author's honesty.

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

#57

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…

>I bet insider trading is not as fun when you're unemployed and bankrupt.

Not just unemployed, likely unemployable by any reputable company in the industry.

Also, good on you for having integrity, but honestly what you say is too much for the average person to be tempted with. Does anyone have a solution for lowering that temptation and making these scenarios less likely?

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

#59
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Palantir doesn’t have a product that actually does this, contrary to whatever sales presentation you might’ve heard.

(I know someone whose gov org almost found this out the hard way after nearly flushing millions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet)

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

#60

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…

[Edited to remove harsh phrasing]. Consider this: there is no upside from this comment and quite a bit of potential (although likely low probability) downside.

Wouldn’t someone determined just look at LinkedIn?
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