Friday, December 07, 2012

Insider Trading: Grand Game "Mad-Enough-to-Spit" Edition



Wow. Wowdie wow wow. Exec thinks company has had good month. Exec posts happy note to this effect on Facebook. Regulatory thugs call this "insider trading", and prosecute.

This was not a secret note to investors.  It. was. on. Facebook.

For reasons I have never understood, "insider" trading makes lefties insane. Drvies them mad. And so on.

I actually find this argument persuasive: if we allowed insider trading, prices would be more accurate.
But you can stop well short of that view and still think it's okay to post accurate information on Facebook. I mean, IT WAS ON FACEBOOK.

Judge for yourself, friends.  That's the law.  And here is the Facebook post.  Click for an even more public and open image:
And then, go crazy, folks, go crazy.

Nod to Angry Alex.
 

6 comments:

Angus said...

If he has less than 300,000,000 friends, he's guilty, guilty, guilty!

Joel said...

What else does the SEC have to do?

mobile said...

Facebook posts aren't public. This message was only visible to his 245,000 subscribers.

Brad Hutchings said...

The policy differences between Team Blue and Team Red are not very big. But the gulf in governing temperament is almost wide enough and important enough to make me consider hoping that Team Red might be more accommodating to libertarians one day.

Thomas W said...

I'm reminded of the Patent office. "Prior art" tends to consist of existing patents and some publications. Common knowledge has no weight. I've often said I could patent the spoon if I were creative enough in my language.

Thomas W said...

Thinking about this some more, the obvious answer is for companies to file an 8K with the SEC for every "official" Facebook post. After which, there will be so much junk it will be impossible to detect the anything of actual significance.

This would probably be ideal for a company trying to hide problems. Just bury an explicit release of the problems in a few hundred 8-K filings of Facebook postings.