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Comment by noah_buddy | Hacker News Reader

I would guess that these executives entered their sales months in advance as is relatively typical to avoid insider trading. You can look this up on the SEC website

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And in the case of company failure, perhaps the lookback period should be extended beyond several months. I don't have nearly the financial or legal knowledge to suggest viable policy, but from what we know of how SVB failed it would have likely been visible well in advance of the failure to someone with access to the requisite information.

Edit: Also, the CEO sold stock not even two weeks in advance https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-10/svb-chief...

I don't know why people keep calling out the CEO stock sales, unless we find out something new this was almost guaranteed to have been done pursuant to a publicly filed 10b5-1 plan which has a 30 or 90 day cooling off period and must be filed when they have no material non-public information. So if the CEO could see this coming, anyone else could have too on the basis of the same information.

These things can come at you fast. They probably put in the trade instructions sometime last year and they are not permitted to make modifications to the 10b5-1 when they do come into material non-public information as that is itself insider trading.

Trading (or changing a 10b5-1 plan) while in possession of material non-public information, whether in your favor or not, is insider trading.

It was definitely a 10b5-1 plan, but apparently done pretty recently as such things go, only back to January.

I don’t know if your are just ignorant or if your are intentionally misleading people but this system is widely abused. A stock sale can be schedule in your plan at the end of every month and you can elect to cancel a planned sale at any time. The CEO used exactly this type of sham plan to unload his shares. Look at the plan he filed this year and the plan he filed every year for the last three years.

> A stock sale can be schedule in your plan at the end of every month and you can elect to cancel a planned sale at any time.

Canceling a 10b5-1 is not in and of itself a violation, correct, but it can kill your affirmative defense as it jeopardizes the good faith element.

However, they would have had to have entered into the 10b5-1 prior to them coming into material nonpublic information in the first place for it to have been valid at all. My point is they made the decision to sell before they knew what was happening and filed a compliant trading plan.

Sounds fair, but lucky.

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