This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Oh come on those are just co-incidences!
These trades are akin to winning bets at blackjack while counting cards.
Not technically illegal but dishonest.
If you’re an executive, that would be having a team of people to count the cards for you and message you with the results when you need them.
I would think that among other things this would open the companies up to shareholder suits, because investing in your competitors really isn’t entirely compatible with maximizing returns for your own company.
Because they’d get caught in 8 seconds trading their own stock that way, so they just join the billionaire circle jerk and trade information, like “strangers on a train.” Let me know when one of these fucks goes to prison. Just one. I won’t bother to wait.
All these folks socialize. Golf, fly-fishing, hunting, mahjong.
It’s kind of unusual to not have irregular stock price movements just prior to a news release.
According to Adam Smith, globalization should have made goods cheaper. That it did not proves a wink/nod collusion at the executive level in our corporate world. In many industries they just don’t compete anymore.
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
“The perception that industry insiders use that knowledge for personal gain could undermine the public’s confidence that the markets are fair.”
Everyone knows the markets are as fair as the autocrats allow them to be.
ETA. As George Carlin said, “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.” Thank you @john_adams below.
That kind of coincidence takes a hell of a lot of planning.
Coincidence / Coordination / Collusion
Pot-A-to / Pot-ah-to / Dan Quayle
Just another tiny blip on the road to a permanent aristocracy defined by wealth. These kind of stories really make me angry - they also make me feel hopeless when I look at my grandkids. It has truly just become a rigged carny game.
Why would they compete? Their kids go to the same schools, they belong to the same clubs, they show up at the same cocktail parties, they fuck one another’s wives, so why would anyone think they’d upset that apple cart by actually competing. As George Carlin said, “It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it.”
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
- Ian Fleming
“they may have simply been relying on years of broad industry knowledge to make astute bets at fortuitous moments.”
If you believe the above I have a bridge to sell you. The market is just a long term roulette wheel depending on how certain people feel or behave on any certain day.
If I did anything close to this I would be under investigation in short order. But, I don’t have the cash to contribute to those in power when they ask.
Not that I think the system is corrupt. It is but I don’t think about it.
As I remember it - Martha Stewart saved (possibly) around $35,000 by selling because of a tip and she went to jail.
And this guy gets? Nothing? Richer?
A pretty thick and depressive report. But excellent.
So far, this…
[executives] may have simply been relying on years of broad industry knowledge to make astute bets at fortuitous moments
The stock market. Legal gambling only for high rollers.
That hand ain’t so invisible, eh?!?!
Even when they do, they don’t.
I went looking for glue yesterday. I really just needed a drop. Well, one company had a large tube for $8. The small tube was $7. Beside it, another brand had a large tube for $8 and a small for $7. Finally, I looked around, and noticed the entire isle was like that. Same products, different brands, same choices, same price.
We’re being gouged.
That filters into the media reporting.
I think it was during the 2008 campaign, where, when driving to work, I’d hear, “Stocks rose yesterday on expectations of…” In the afternoon, “Stocks were mixed as investors digested news…” and then it would go down because (evidently) everybody got bummed because [insert news headline]"
Do stocks really go down when Biden doesn’t lock his bike?