RE: Minty9 Feb 2019 23:33
SBP, trust you to apply that angle in that way. Correct but unless they wish to be charged with insider trading it's generally good practice to avoid director buying or selling close to news. I'm not saying that's the case here, was just presenting it as a best case scenario.
"Executives and people with access to financial data may only be able to trade the stock in the month following release of financial data (e.g., May 1-31, August 1-31, November 1-30, and February 1-28). Also, since an executive selling a large amount of stock could be viewed as bad and drive the value down, some companies also require key executives to give 30 days notice of their plans to buy or sell stock. Again, it is to prevent insider trading. If you are able to read that the CEO is planning to sell $1B of stock in a month, you may take that as a sign that the stock price is likely to fall and you can sell now. If the stock price does decline, the CEO sells at that lower price in a month.
It is not that the CEO of a public company is not allowed to buy or sell his stock before a positive earnings result, but generally done to avoid being charged with insider trading. If the CEO buys and reports are positive and the price goes up, does any really believe that was not done based on knowing that the report would beat expectations and be viewed as very positive?"