doopstr

If you have any doubt in your mind about insider trading, take a look at today's action with HLT. Now try to tell me that the buyout announced after the bell wasn't well known by the big boys.

Today's Volume: 7,471,285
Avg Vol (3m): 3,361,940

Keep in mind today was a half day.

Zippee

Did it go up or down?

NetEditor

http://biz.yahoo.com/bizj/070703/1486466.html?.v=3

Yeah, that wouldn't have anything to do with it.

Take off the tinfoil hat.

NetEditor

BTW, insiders have to file before selling stock. And the buyout was for $40 a share. What did you expect to happen at the opening bell?

doopstr

The stock rose all day tuesday on huge volume. The announcement came after tuesday's closing bell. The fund managers knew about it before the average Joe. That is illegal.

doopstr

Do a little more research first.

NetEditor

What you describe is not insider trading unless you can somehow prove corporate officers tipped off fund managers.

fdl

If what you are saying is true, that activity will surely rung the alarms and there will be investigations.

NetEditor

Me? You are somehow insinuating illegal insider took place with absolutely no proof. Ever heard of rumors? As someone who once worked as a business journalist, I got all kinds of information about deals, potential deals, mergers, etc., most times only a day or even hours before it was publicly announced, and journalists are usually the last to know before the general public.

doopstr

Double the average volume on a half day trading should be enough to trigger an investigation. There is no doubt that fund managers were tipped off about this ahead of time.

How would you explain the huge uptick in volume before the announcement? You think a rumor would trigger that kind of volume on a half day before a holiday?

Now will the SEC investigate this? Probably not.

fdl

Not based on volume alone, but if there is suspicious trading from individual fund managers, then I think yes.


Anyways, sorry for interupting your debate ...

Slinks

unfortunately, insider trading happens all the time; and unless someone is blatant about it, its hard to get caught.

I dont know much about this particular stock (haven't clicked on the link)....
but if it did spike in volume the day of the buyout....well in that case, I doubt its just a rumor that causd the spoke.

BTW, NetEditor, the types of rumors you get the day/hours of the announcement are because of an insider information leak.

Outsiders don't tend to come up with rumors on the same day as the announcment. They get them because someone in the company illegally passed on that information.

The chain of events you're discribing NetEditor is probably an employee discusses something like "we're about to be bought out by ___" to their friend. Their friend buys stock in the company based on this info that is not public (this is illegal). The friend then tells someone else, who might also buy stock (this is less illegal since the line to the insider is harder to prove), and sooner or later you as the business journalist finds out (at which point you say its just a rumor when in fact it was a chain of ppl passing on inside information...the difference between this and a rumor is that a rumor is someone theorized it would happen and passed on their theory....but at the point at which you get it, you cant know for sure which is which).

Of course insider trading isnt the only thing that hurts ppl. Not as much anymore, but things like traders front running mutual fund transactions also used to happen all the time (which causes the fund to have lower gains, and hence the individual investors in that fund to have less gains).

Silver™

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...b4I&refer=home

NetEditor

Suspicious? Yes. Absolutely insider trading (which is what it sounded like you were saying)? Very hard to say.

In a deal this big, it's very hard to keep news from leaking. You have so many parties involved. This kind of stuff happens all the time. I got so much news before anyone else in my days working at a business publication, it wasn't even funny. Too bad we were all required to sign documents stating we could lose our jobs if we made any stock transactions.

doopstr

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-p...-idUSKCN1PI34V