There's nothing illegal about trading your employer's stock if you don't have access to insider information. Millions of investors do that with no problems.
There's a lot of companies out there. It's easy to pick one that definitely won't get you in to trouble instead of one that probably won't get you in to trouble.
not familiar with the whole situation, but I'd worry the company would tell me times that were advantageous for it, not necessarily for me.
on edit: I suppose the downvotes are HNs way of telling me that would be a silly thing to worry about. Thanks for the clarification.
on second edit: thanks for the actual clarifications as to why I would be silly to worry about that kind of thing.
Besides, are there really bad and good times for the company? Its not like the company itself is affected, just the stock holders. Management wants stock to go up because management usually owns stock. So screwing you would also screw themselves.
Last of all, if you dont like the blackout periods, you can just setup an arms length plan to bypass it https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule-10b5-1.asp
My company does this and it is a relief for legal compliance reasons.
Most Senior Execs and the whole Financial division typically fall under these umbrellas.
>As further explained in Amazon’s Insider Trading FAQs, “puts, calls, warrants and other types of option securities” were required to “be cleared in advance with the Legal Department, regardless of whether that employee is otherwise subject to preclearance or to the trading window, even if that employee is not in possession of material nonpublic information.”
Amazon employees require Amazon's Legal approval before trading Amazon options.
page 6, #17-21
These are not stock. You definitely don’t need Amazon Legal approval to trade Amazon stock - otherwise all employees that get RSUs would need approval to sell their stock.
> Amazon employees require Amazon's Legal approval before trading Amazon stock.
Options are not stock, they're options. Employees are generally (maybe always?) restricted from trading in derivatives like options. That doesn't mean they can't trade stock (outside blackout windows).
Err, example please? I'm totally blanking here, not gonna lie.
This is not common. In the story, the guy's wife worked in finance so had confidential info about earnings. The rank and file can trade whenever the hell we want with whatever stock we want, including our employer's. No one bats an eye.
In almost every case, no employees (insider or otherwise) are permitted to sell derivatives (calls, puts), while they are employed.
There should instead be restrictions on the time for an order to go through, not on the act of insider trading.