The chairman of the SEC agrees with you.
You said:
"The whole situation is sad to us little people as we are not privy to all this information which the biggies use to clean us out. We are always in the dark. This whole situation smells of a rotten egg."
SEC's Levitt Sees Apparent Insider-Trading Increase By Analysts
Dow Jones Online News, Monday, March 02, 1998 at 01:24
By Paul Beckett, Dow Jones Newswires
WASHINGTON -- Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt said he was troubled by an apparent increase in insider trading by analysts.
In a speech to a conference of securities lawyers here Friday, Mr.
Levitt said he was "concerned about one increasingly worrisome form of trading on the basis of nonpublic information." That trading, he said, appears to occur when a company tells news to some of its "favorite Wall Street analysts" before the news is made publicly available. "In the interval -- after the analysts know the news, but before the public knows it -- there is a great deal of unusual trading," Mr. Levitt said. "Well, it doesn't take Oliver Stone to imagine how that might come about."
Mr. Levitt said it would be preferable that calls to analysts and
selected institutional investors not come before a news release, "and
even then, these discussions should not divulge new material information not contained in that press release."
The industry, Mr. Levitt cautioned, should exercise self-restraint
"before we have to step in." He said it was clear to him and to the
SEC's enforcement division "that issuers should not selectively disclose information to certain influential analysts in order to curry favor with them and reap a tangible benefit, such as a positive press spin."
Mr. Levitt said "any investor looking at this situation would think
it is wrong for those who have received this information to trade before the public announcement or to tip off their friends, family members or colleagues in their firms." Mr. Levitt said that legally, "you can split hairs all you want, but ethically, it's very clear: If analysts or their firms are trading -- knowing this information, and prior to public release -- it's just as wrong as if corporate insiders did it."
He noted that securities firms are supposed to have barriers to stop
the spread of such information. "But when we see trading spikes in this short time period," he said, "I worry about the effectiveness of those internal mechanisms." |
