This may sound snarky, but it's not meant to be. When I've worked in large corporations I was astounded by the amount of... shall we say "irregular" stock activity. For a while I've been struck with the thought that you could probably make a pretty good living simply buying long stock the day before executive stock options are issued and then selling them again when executives are selling theirs (either through planned trades or when blackouts are lifted).

Interestingly (for me, anyway) the very large places I've worked at often let the peons listen to the analysts meetings over the phone system. Again, I was shocked by the complete lack of knowledge that analysts at big investment houses have in the companies they were analysing. They would be completely unaware of large acquisitions, law suits and any number of things that even the casual observer would know about. I really got the impression that their job was literally to attend the meeting and report the company's projections. The company's could get away with murder because nobody was paying attention to what they were doing.

Not sure if things have tightened up since that time in my life. I haven't worked for a big company since the early 2000's, but somehow I get the impression that there are probably plenty of ways to ride on the coattails of less than scrupulous executive compensation.