Insider Trading Explained

                     I was greeted by Mrs.Hudson on entering Holmes apartment, she was the land lady. She had some concerns on sherlock's weekend routine, hearing odd noises and she suspects he has been running some chemical experiments lately. I assured her that I would take care about it and those noises were probably due to the unpacking, as he just started settling in. On entering Holmes apartment I found his dog Gladstone, lying dead on the floor. Holmes said "I was simply testing a new anesthetic. He dosen 't mind.". That explained why Mrs.Hudson was concerned about him. Before I could say anything else. Holmes said he was expecting a visitor, any minute and asked if I could take notes for him during the conversation. I asked him what was it about and why does he want it to be documented, He replied "It's about Insider trading, and we would be discussing various cases related to it. It would help you understand how I nailed the duo for gaming, at the office last week". He assured me he would give more than one reason to prove the duo were guilty. I helped myself to find a pen and a piece of paper as we heard someone knock on the door. Holmes asked them to come in. A middle aged man walked in holding his bag, contents of what looked like his notes and study. He introduced himself as Lestrade, student of B.com Mass communications and was interested in journalism.

Lestrade was assigned to write an article on "Insider Trading" and he wasn't quite sure where to begin with and he asked Holmes if he could help him understand better. Holmes narrated the course of events that took place in the office last week, when the puzzle was announced and how the duo were found guilty of gaming, their practices to gain unfair advantage. Then he started, "Thats the simplest example, taking part in an exam or competition for which you already have the exact answers for questions being asked". Similarly, executives and members of a company have certain laws that they should abide to trade on stocks, because it is most likely that they have information at hand which is not made public. This gives them an advantage to trade in the their favour and make more money or also reduce their losses based on the information. Lestrade was curious and asked Holmes to give more examples of such cases and how we can make out such trends of possible insider trading. He said the most important aspect of this is data, you need to as much as information at hand in order to prove someone guilty. He said "You cannot imply the illegal activity on someone, unless you have proof and as always the little details are by far the most important. He agreed to share information on the recent findings on this regard and use our duo from work as the characters involved in these findings.

• Drive together: One of the possibility is that Kanaka Rao and Bhaskar take the same cab to office everyday and Bhaskar must have gained information regarding Kanaka Rao's All-Hands presentation and its content.       (Source: SEC.gov, Ref:Two Roomates)
• During their Smoke Break: Kanaka Rao usually fancies taking his thinkpad along with him while he goes out for a smoke, He keeps himself occupied with work and always finishes his tasks ahead of the deadline. While he tried to give an impression that he was a workaholic, it was a good practice to have exposed his work which carries information of certain level to others.    (Source: SEC.gov, Ref: Amateur Golfers)
• The Old timer needs some assistance when it come to constantly upgrading technology: Bhaskar was new graduate while Kanaka Rao being an old timer. Both were cabbies and also went on smoke breaks together, Bhaskar had more than enough chances to discuss and share his technical knowledge of which Kanaka Rao had none. Kanaka Rao needed help in effectively using the widgets and making his work look better and presentable. Such dependencies, costs you, data for the presentations having to be shared.     (Source: SEC.gov, Ref: IT Employee)

These were just a few recent findings on how it could be done, where as the possibilities are numerous. Insider trading need not be a case where information is shared, but it can also be a situation where information is acquired from the person concealing the information. Either of the cases, are considered illegal. When Lestrade asked Holmes on what happened in the case of Bhaskar and Kanaka Rao, he replied "Kanaka Rao is a genius, we don't have any examples to discuss their case at the moment" and "Now if you would excuse me Lestrade, I have some work to do and we shall discuss further during next weekend. Lestrade was quick in collecting his stuff and thanked Holmes for his time and left. I wasn't going to let go of Holmes until he told me the details of the case from office. Holmes was back on his science experiment and upon asking if he could talk about the case.

With a smirk on his face, he said "If Mr.Bhaskar accessed the information about the puzzle from Kanaka Rao, it would lead to Gaming or Insider Trading that we just discussed. What if it was Kanaka Rao, who suggested the theme for the puzzle, and actually convinced the Program Managers on publishing it in the All-Hands?"

References:

- SEC enforcement actions, Insider Trading Cases.

- The Atlantic, A google Earth Puzzle.

Read More

Introduction to Insider Trading

1. Insider trading is the trading of a public company's stock or other securities (such as bonds or stock options) by individuals with access to non-public information about the company. In various countries, tradingbased on insider information is illegal.

   I will be using this introduction to explain "Insider trading", I have created these fictional characters and scenario to help me explain the topic better in my next post.

                 I and my friend were waiting for the All-Hands meeting to get over so that we could grab a coffee, He recently moved in to the city during that week and joined the same company which I was working for since more than an year now. All-Hands is a team huddle we have every week, where you repeatedly get to hear the corporate one liners  like "Pull up your socks" and "Let's strike while the iron is hot" and so on. That day, there was something new towards the end of the meeting, they have asked us to solve a puzzle which would relate to our daily work. It was about giving the geographical coordinates of 10 locations with the help of a picture and short description  given. For example,

                  "Circular community on the shores of the mediterranean sea"

After the meet was over I started walking towards the cafeteria, but my friend was already busy finding his way towards the workstation. He turned back and asked "Do you know if they use the arrow shaped fish traps in india?". I replied, "Since when are you, showing interest in fishing?". He laughed, and said "Ok, you go ahead and get me a coffee too, Black, two sugars, please." and walked away into the crowd towards his desk. I went towards the cafeteria, it was less crowded than usual. There I met a couple of guys from my training batch and I heard someone mention how all the newbies were so excited about the puzzle. I grabbed our drinks and went to check on my friend, who I assumed would have solved more than 5 of them in this span of 10mins. He was furiously navigating through various tabs, googling information based on the clues given and by seeing some screenshots in his screen I finally understood what he was referring to when he mentioned about the arrow shaped fish traps. 

Arrow shaped fish traps in Tonle Sap Lake, Cambodia

He continued working on it for 5 more minutes before he paid any attention to me and said, "I'v solved all 10, time to reply on the mail". He did reply on it immediately but didn't seem happy about it. He gave an Ldap(Corporate ID) from office and asked if I could show that person. It was not that hard and I could make out that it was Baddam Bhaskar as I worked on a couple of projects earlier with him. About an hour later the results for the puzzle were mailed and in the mail also were the names of the three winners, my friend was in the second place and his time elapsed was 15mins. I saw that the person who won it has finished it in 8mins and it happens to be the same person whom I was asked to show earlier. 

The next day before leaving to work, I could not reach my friend on his phone. After a couple of mins, I received a text message from an unknown number with his initials saying "Meet me at the corridor on 5th floor at 11am. S". On reaching office, I rushed to 5th floor. As I was walking out of the elevator I saw a group of people from our team bidding adieu to Bhaskar and Kanaka Rao, who was our Team lead who also handles work assignments and prepares the presentation for All-hands every week . I learned from the team members that the duo has been terminated from their duties after they were caught for gaming, which is involved in illegal means to enhance their work performance. I found my friend at the far corner of the corridor, on approaching I was greeted by our HR manager and I was congratulated for helping my friend in unveiling this illegal gaming activities at work. We had a short conversation, in which I could not understand most of the it until my friend had explained how he tracked down the duo and shared the details based on which he convinced the managers that the they were involved in the illegal practices to gain an unfair advantage over the others. 

The rest of the day was not the same, I could make out that people on the floor were acting weird when I was around, I could hear whispers while I was around and team members switching between desktops to hide their work. Towards the end of the day, I received a mail from the Sr.manager which said that I and my friend were to head a gaming team and were asked to continue the regular work while we kept watching for any trends or practices to identify malpractices at work. Somehow, a close group of friends from my training batch got to know about the mail I received and started posting questions in our group's discussion on how we managed to nail the duo. To be honest, I could not connect the threads myself and only knew few bits of information which my friend mentioned that led to the discovery of such practices. Everyone were getting even more anxious, and I was swarmed by messages in our group's discussion on how we did it. 

It was about logout time by then, hence before logging out I replied "For more information on the same, This weekend, visit us at my friends apartment, 221B Baker's Street and the name is Sherlock Holmes. -John Watson" 

Read More