What you describe is not how insider trading works. Insider trading can only occur if you sell stocks due to secret knowledge that the stock price will fall, or buy stocks due to secret knowledge that the stock price will rise. This sale is only advantageous because it took place after the good news was public knowledge, because that public knowledge is what let him sell for such a good price.
Yes, unless of course the announcement, which was of course only coincidentally timed to go out on the same day as this trade, was only meant to pump the stock for a bit before it turns out that everyone who takes the vaccine now shits out of their noses.
Now you're just making shit up to justify your misinformed opinion. Pfizer can't both be withholding the vaccine until post-election because it would be such a boon for Trump and know that it's a lemon that will backfire on the people holding the bag.
That's highly unimaginative. If you were the CEO of a company that's making a vaccine for a virus that has the entire world going batshit insane, and that, if effective, will probably sell billions of doses all over the world in the first wave, with a possibility of repeat business if the immunity doesn't last for very long, would you get rid of over a half of your stock? If everything is on the level then the stock should keep soaring, the announcement is just the first bump, it won't stop there.
But no, the CEO cashed out hard. The only conclusion is that either the vaccine plain doesn't work (highly likely given the amount of mutations), or it causes some serious side effects (somewhat less likely, however this is possibly the most rushed vaccine in history, and a first one of its kind at that), or both.
So here's what could plausibly have happened:
Pfizer has a vaccine that's useless or worse.
The CEO wants to get paid.
The "system" knows, and reaches to the CEO with a deal: we'll let you pump and dump by making a big announcement and then immediately cashing out, as long as you make sure the announcement comes after the election. (At this point it doesn't matter whether the vaccine is actually useful or not, nobody knows - but making the announcement before the election would definitely benefit Republicans regardless.)
This article and dozens of similar ones come out. Nobody investigates Pfizer's officers for insider trading, as per the deal. <--- You are here.
The vaccine turns out to be shit.
The media either says "oh no!" and then ignores it along with the rest of the Covid crisis, or blames Le Drumpf.
Oh and now that I think of it, the timing is absolutely perfect: the announcement came late enough to not give any points to Trump, but early enough that everyone will forget about it by the time Biden is potentially inaugurated.
This whole thing stinks like a Chinese wet market.
If I correctly remember the mandatory insider trading training my employer makes me take every year, you can be charged with insider trading if you decide to execute the trade using material non-public information even if you wait until the information becomes public to actually execute the trade.
The training explicitly uses an example of an employee having a trade set up and ready to execute as soon as a press release goes out.
But it still only works one way: buying on the way up, or selling on the way down. The other way around can't be insider trading, because the reverse relies on the material information being disseminated to the public to be worthwhile. If you have insider information that the stock price is going to go up, using your insider information to sell before everyone else realises and makes the stock price go up just hurts you.
What you describe is not how insider trading works. Insider trading can only occur if you sell stocks due to secret knowledge that the stock price will fall, or buy stocks due to secret knowledge that the stock price will rise. This sale is only advantageous because it took place after the good news was public knowledge, because that public knowledge is what let him sell for such a good price.
Yes, unless of course the announcement, which was of course only coincidentally timed to go out on the same day as this trade, was only meant to pump the stock for a bit before it turns out that everyone who takes the vaccine now shits out of their noses.
Now you're just making shit up to justify your misinformed opinion. Pfizer can't both be withholding the vaccine until post-election because it would be such a boon for Trump and know that it's a lemon that will backfire on the people holding the bag.
That's highly unimaginative. If you were the CEO of a company that's making a vaccine for a virus that has the entire world going batshit insane, and that, if effective, will probably sell billions of doses all over the world in the first wave, with a possibility of repeat business if the immunity doesn't last for very long, would you get rid of over a half of your stock? If everything is on the level then the stock should keep soaring, the announcement is just the first bump, it won't stop there.
But no, the CEO cashed out hard. The only conclusion is that either the vaccine plain doesn't work (highly likely given the amount of mutations), or it causes some serious side effects (somewhat less likely, however this is possibly the most rushed vaccine in history, and a first one of its kind at that), or both.
So here's what could plausibly have happened:
Oh and now that I think of it, the timing is absolutely perfect: the announcement came late enough to not give any points to Trump, but early enough that everyone will forget about it by the time Biden is potentially inaugurated.
This whole thing stinks like a Chinese wet market.
If I correctly remember the mandatory insider trading training my employer makes me take every year, you can be charged with insider trading if you decide to execute the trade using material non-public information even if you wait until the information becomes public to actually execute the trade.
The training explicitly uses an example of an employee having a trade set up and ready to execute as soon as a press release goes out.
But it still only works one way: buying on the way up, or selling on the way down. The other way around can't be insider trading, because the reverse relies on the material information being disseminated to the public to be worthwhile. If you have insider information that the stock price is going to go up, using your insider information to sell before everyone else realises and makes the stock price go up just hurts you.