Does anyone honestly care about a million dollar trade by some employee's husband?
The bar for insider trading is hilariously low - this seems like a total waste of time and resources when you could be chasing whales like you should be.
The bar for insider trading is hilariously low - this seems like a total waste of time and resources when you could be chasing whales like you should be.
That's what the Bohra's thought!
It's what a lot of insider trading criminals think. They think the SEC has "thresholds" and only go after "whales". They don't, they look for patterns and go for it. Low hanging fruit is irresistible for them, it's not a "waste of resources."
What's ironic is the that typical insider trading criminals are well-compensated exec level staff. These people pull in Nx100K total comp. The thing is, at those level their peers have wildly variable net-worth. Some come from dynastic wealth, others clawed their way up from ordinary backgrounds. Tragically the ones who clawed their way up tend to suffer from envy when they look at the toys some of their old-money peers have-- they end up looking for "shortcuts" to keep up with the Joneses. Envy can lead to ugly things.
So you think if someone earns 50 bucks for beer with insider trades each year, they will go after them? I mean why not, but I guess there has to be a line somewhere.
The people who do insider trading, however, do it for greed. 50 bucks once a year isn’t going to cut it for them.
Yes.
> this seems like a total waste of time and resources
I'm willing to bet that the investigation and prosecution cost less than the ~$1.2 million in excess fines Bohra had to pay. Not really a waste of resources if it's a profitable endeavour.
I believe the intent was to provide a chilling effect on regular people at FAMGAN-type companies who may have some access to insider information and were perhaps toying with the prospect of acting on it.
It is not just random million dollars trade. Money are not created out of thin air, money are taken from someone. In this case, money was taken from Amazon shareholders. 0.000001 of each shareholder approximately.
Generally, insider trading hurts trust in financial system, and when it happens unpunished, each american citizen is hurt.
I've personally never considered a million dollars a low-ball figure.