It has been observed that companies tend to underperform when their insiders use trading plans to sell stock. New research also points to the conclusion that more aggressive plans are associated with the lowest performances. Gradient Analytics Inc., an independent research firm, followed insider sales of 30 companies and concluded that “aggressive” trading plans resulted in a 9.7% average underperformance in their companies’ stocks over 6 months. Insider-trading plans (also called 10b5-1 plans) are arrangements that allow the insiders of publicly traded companies to sell stocks they possess. To determine whether a trading plan can be considered “aggressive”, Gradient had specific measures. Gradient noticed in the summer of 2007 that Novatel Wireless Inc. executives had started selling through trading …show more content…
They also noticed that the amounts being sold were drastically larger than past selling. In fact, during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of that year, 9 of Novatel’s executives sold 1.4 million shares for 33 million dollars. Gradient noticed more aggressive behavior when those same executives dropped over half of their beneficial ownership of Novatel with the sales of these stocks. Also, any plan less than 12 months is considered aggressive. The President and Acting Chief Executive of Novatel, George B. Weinert, had only a 6-month plan. After Gradient’s report, Novatel’s shares dropped over 50% in 6 months. The lesson of this article is that when a company starts to use insider-trading plans, it may be time to sell that company’s stock. An SEC spokesperson has declined to comment on if they believe some companies could abuse 10b5-1
When assessing the economic damage to due to Paul Thayer and those that he tipped off about the acquisition of Campbell Taggart, it should be noted that some argue that this kind of insider trading circulates information and forces the stock to its “true value.” If we assume this argument to be flawed, then part of Anheuser-Busch stock dip after the announcement was due to the insider trading and the fact Anheuser-Busch probably paid more to acquire its target. Thayer and his friends trade the Campbell stock for nearly a month before any public announcement of the merger. On July 27 nearly half the volume was insider volume controlled by those individuals who were in violation of rule 14(e)-3 (See exhibit 2). The increased volume might
The weekly performance of IBM stock presented a contestant growth. One highlight of the falling of stock price in the 6th week in the investment period was when IBM presented the 3rd quarter financial report. The investors weren’t satisfied with the profit report which they expected to be better especially when other IT companies were doing well in the 3rd quarter. One mistake I made was that I didn’t follow closely to the financial report of the company; therefore, I missed the peak of the stock price. From this experience, I learned that financial reports and current news are important indicators of the stock price. By following closely to the current event and analyzing the financial report, investors can maximize the profit and also become more familiar to the market.
The first strategy attempted by the group involved timing trades based on daily market performance and expectations. Based on our predictions, shares were bought during the early hours of trading and by mid-day, the group had a good idea what would be kept until the next day of trading and what would be sold by close. This strategy made use of daily market news and reports to help predict short term changes; little attention was paid to long term potential as the group felt the timeframe the simulation take place in was too short. This strategy, while mildly successful, was not earning large enough gains for the group's portfolio. Many of our gains would be negated by the commission the simulator charged per trade. This strategy later evolved to include larger equity purchases on Fridays before the market closed for the weekend. These
SEC alleged that Mark Cuban violated misappropriate insider trading. To be qualified as misappropriate insider trading, an individual wrongfully obtains (misappropriates) inside information and trades on it for her or his personal benefit. In this case, Cuban actually traded his shares based on the material inside information he was told and saved him $750,000 in losses. Wrongful misappropriation means violation of a fiduciary duty.
Hence, the leadership style of Reed Hastings is extremely important for the purpose of this report and will be the key focus of the research as well. In the beginning of the year 2005, the analysts of Wedbush Securities Stock had place a price targeting at 3 dollars, the trading of which was being done at the price of approximately 11 dollars (Loftus
““The name of the game, moving money from your clients pocket to your pocket”, Mark stated. “But if you can make your clients money at the same time it’s advantageous to everyone, correct?” “No, Mark replied…Okay, first rule of Wall Street-nobody and I don’t care if you are Warren Buffet or Jimmy Buffet- knows if a stock is going up, down or sideways, least of all stock brokers. But we have to pretend we know.”” (8)
The biggest mistake the board of directors made was to trust a single man only because of his reputation. Just because Nick Leeson was reporting large profits, he was given virtually free rein and nobody had knowledge of his activity, when a trader on arbitrage strategies should not report such profits. The fact that Nick Leeson was reporting such profits should have been interpreted by the board of directors as a warning bell.
Insider dealing has been affecting the efficiency of stock markets in different places like United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Hong Kong is of no exception. Basically, insider dealing refers to the trading of a corporation’s stock or other securities by individual with potential access to non-public information of the company. The law of insider dealing in Hong Kong provides a much more detailed definition and is very comprehensive. However, when it comes to enforcement, it seems not very effective. In the following, the law of insider dealing in Hong Kong will be summarized. After analyzing the comprehensiveness of the law, the underlying reasons of the difficulty in enforcement will be identified. Some
Gain did engage in inside trading because he made family members buy securities which made the price of the share to increase when his company Forest Media was trying to acquire RS Communication. In this case civil sanctions would come against Gain and family members who purchased the shares. Gain could be found liable by the court with a Scienter requirement because he tried to tip the scale for the acquisition of RS Communication by Forest Media.
It is always surreal when I see or read about someone charged with insider trading. Hence, today when I saw the news of the SEC charges of insider trading against Mr. Cooperman, I was reminded of the personal ordeal, I went through several years ago. The good news for Mr. Cooperman is that he is only facing civil charges. If the charges are proven, he is going to face penalties, fines and possibility of impairment of his ability to operate his hedge fund. Yes his legacy might be marred, but this, potentially is a much better outcome than facing criminal charges.
For example, Manna (1966) states that insider trading should be allowed because insider trading is the most effective way to compensate to insider to generate new economic information in firm. Hirshleifer() states that for insider, good information is as good as bad information to make profit but this profit may not be related to economic contribution of insiders in corporate. Proponents of insider trading suggest (Carlton and Fischel (1983) that insiders are the most informative member in the market, and by trading, they bring new information to the markets and causing prices to change toward their true value and, therefore, promoting the optimal allocation of resources. On the other hand, Scholars (Benabou and Laroqu, 1992) say that insider trading may provide incentive to corporate insiders either to delay the announcement of price-sensitive information to public or to prevent to release price sensitive information, which in turn makes stock prices less informative. However, Georgakopoulos (1993) argues that restriction on insider trading may have little adverse impact on market efficiency but it reduces the cost of transaction that burdens on uninformed traders
(1)It’s against the SEC laws and inconsistent with GAAP standards; unfair to stockholders; uncertainty about how long the company can cover up the deficiencies which keep growing with the company; honesty and integrity are challenged. (2)Loyalty to Eddie and the company is challenged. No more personal financial benefit can be generated from the rising stock price and the CFO position any more. Investors are still kept in the dark. (3) The company’s stock price may drop significantly when investors learn about the truth; company may face bankruptcy due to loss of public confidence. The wealth of Eddie’s whole family will shrink seriously. (4) While Eddie may
Further, our strategy involved paying attention to current events and attempting to use them to generate a return. For example, Horizon Pharmaceuticals’ stock price took a nosedive after an October 19th New York Times article suggested that Horizon was attempting to thwart Express Scripts’ attempts to lower the price of prescription drugs. The decision was made to buy 100 shares of stock in Horizon when its price spiraled down to a measly $14.62 per share, as we expected Horizon would do something to stop the bleeding, and historically has been a pretty volatile stock. Horizon came back with a scorching rebuttal in an open letter later that day, spiking its stock price more than 30% on October 23rd, and by October 28th, this move landed us our greatest return of any stock that we purchased and held until the end of the period: 18% (see appendix).
The illegal construction of the Bernie Madoff securities pyramid scheme grew to preposterous proportions from legal, auditing, and regulatory weaknesses of the Securities Exchange Commission, the designated regulatory body of the U.S. financial markets. The required expertise, authority, and relevant penalties needed to deter management from committing ethical breaches lacked substance in the case study of BMIS (Crews 11). Even after the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals that occurred in the early 2000s, the SEC unexplainably revoked provisions created to help avoid fraud. The provision the SEC revoked specifically mandated firms structured like Madoff’s to be audited by accounting firms registered and audited by the Board. By revoking the provision, BMIS was allowed to continue its Ponzi scheme for another half a decade with the aid of utilizing an unregistered, small accounting firm called Freihling & Horowitz (“Madoff’s Jenga”
Insider Trading is when members of a corporation trade the company’s stocks when the information of that stock is not yet public. Therefore it can result in giving you an advantage.