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Comment by lacker | Hacker News Reader

If he really wanted to profit in the stock market, he could have bought call options for the cruise lines, or put options on Zoom, both of which jumped more than Pfizer stock did. And if I understand correctly, that wouldn't have been insider trading, that would have been perfectly legal?

Also, the article mentions it was a 10b5-1 plan. Typically that means he is precommitted to sell stock on a predetermined schedule, and had no choice but to continue selling this stock on this day as planned.

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> If he really wanted to profit in the stock market, he could have bought call options for the cruise lines, or put options on Zoom, both of which jumped more than Pfizer stock did. And if I understand correctly, that wouldn't have been insider trading, that would have been perfectly legal?

Oh how easy. All he should have known in advance is that cruise lines and zoom stocks will move more than Pfizer. So strange that he decided not to do that when it is so obvious before the event.

Its not that they would move more or less, it is that they would move a large amount. And would not trigger a news item like this.

That's not hard to know. Any of them would move more than Pfizer. They have been swinging around since the pandemic arrived. All the cruise lines soared the last time talk of a vaccine happened as well, while Zoom fell.

Why does Zoom go up on vaccine news?

It didn't. It went down, crashed pretty hard. I don't think it was the only factor, though.

It doesn't. It goes down.

Zoom would go down, sorry. I was thinking of cruise lines. Pick any one of them and you would profit handsomely. But as others are saying, you can also bet on the stock going down.

It doesn’t. Buying a put option is a bet it will decline because it’s the right to sell a stock at a given price.

I didn't, hence the OP said "put options on Zoom" - that would mean he would make money from Zoom diving (which it did).

The comment I responded to said that "Zoom soared" which is why I asked.

Presumably you've made at least 500k in trading vs cruse lines and on zoom then?

You need the inside info of when vaccine news is coming out FFS. How is this so hard to follow?

Ah. Nvm I'm another blind guy who didn't see you said puts on zoom.

But he didn't know about the vaccine news ahead of time

If I had known about the Pfizer announcement beforehand? Yeah, I would have.

OP's point is that those things are correlated to the vaccine announcement (more travel coming, less remote work), so not random stock market decisions. Per my understanding though, this would still be considered insider trading as securities are being traded on the basis of non-public information (doesn't have to be your own stock).

> move more than Pfizer.

That’s not the bet. Pfizer is irrelevant because he can’t bet on Pfizer’s stock. He just needs to pick stocks in an industry killed by covid. That’s not hard.

The same pattern has played out on every major vaccination news. Airlines, cruise ships, Disney, etc rally.

And who decides on the announcement date of such a big reveal?

In this case, it was the FDA, who delayed the announcement (and the study itself) until well after it had met the data thresholds it was preregistered to use.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pf...

Pfizer stock popped 12% on monday, more than enough!

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