| You’ve got your causation backwards. He made a series of purchases... ok... of course his last purchase was shortly before the story was published. As to this being his last purchase, well of course—why would he keep buying after his insider advantage had evaporated? At that point there would be nothing more to take advantage of. Anyway, this does not show awareness on the part of the reporter. Yes, the fact that his last purchase was close in time could show that he received timing information, but it could be that he was making lots of purchases over time and simply stopped once the story came out. You note that he started selling after the scoops were published. Again, this doesn’t prove anything about the reporter’s (non-)complicity. I.e., OF COURSE he started selling after the story published. What did you expect him to do? He was waiting on the story to be able to trade on effects of its publication. Once it was published, the stock’s price would have shifted (presumably upwards) based on those facts—no more reason to hold the stock! He bought options, which have time decay. Ok, but we don’t know that he bought options expiring within a few days or weeks rather than months. Anyway, these deal scoops were going to come out sooner or later—but reporters want to avoid being scooped, so they typically come out sooner. Overall, I’m not convinced there’s anything here. Of course a criminal trial would/will make this all clearer... |
So is your claim that they were constantly refreshing the Bloomberg website for weeks? A 5 minute gap is quite suspicious.