Now i don't know about you, but it feels like i'm hearing the term insider training a lot more recently from stories of the robin hood securities. President selling his personal equity stake in amc right before the brokerage essentially stopped. The entire retail trading public from buying the stock to reports of federal reserve chairman having a perfect rebalancing from bonds into stocks right before the federal reserve hit us with one of the most incredible, unlimited quantitative easing policies ever that sent the entire stock market sky high And if i'm being honest, it seems like every other day we're hearing another story of some politician with a very timely and astute trade in some equity bond or some related thing that ends up netting them a lot of money. So because of all that, i thought it would be fun to make a video of five of the most notorious cases of insider trading before we get into all the good stuff.

Just so you know, i am not a financial advisor and i'm definitely not a lawyer. I'm just a guy who happens to know how to google stuff and just for a little bit of foundation. I want you to know what insider trading is officially defined as insider trading is the buying or selling of a publicly traded company stock by someone who has non-public material information about that stock, material. Non-Public information is any information that could substantially impact an investor's decision to buy or sell that security that has not been made available to the public, such as a brokerage's decision to pco a stock or the federal reserve's decision to basically jack up the entire stock market.

To kingdom come - or let's say it could be insider information for a politician that might or might not know what company is about to get one of those sweet sweet us government deals number five. Let's kick this off on the golf course with phil mickelson and billy walters. Now i know, there's probably a pretty good chance. You've heard the name phil mickelson before i mean he's one of the most famous golfers known to man, but one of his golfing buddies was billy walters and he had a relationship with a fellow by the name of tom davis.

Who was a board member at a publicly traded company known as dean foods? Now in the past, billy had offered a bit of a financial support to tom and in return he would get information about dean foods, and this was non-public information and obviously billy walters. Would trade on it and allegedly so, would phil mickelson, who is also a notorious gambler, but this was never prosecuted upon, because no one could ever prove that mickelson knew the source of billy walters information. But just so you know in 2017, billy walters was fined. 10 million dollars and sentenced to prison for five years now, i'm sure i can make some sort of crappy joke of.

Of course, this is the type of business that's done on golf courses, but in all honesty, what i find particularly interesting about this case is, from a legal standpoint, it's very tough to prove unless you're bugging the person of. If they know the source of the information, is it like? Yes, we knew this was insider trading, or is it just a classic stock tip from a buddy of people who are just talking about the market? I would assume that a lot of insider trading does get spread this way like and if they do know or don't know, i mean i guess, that's up to the courts to decide and maybe a person is well aware where the source is coming from, or maybe They truly are protected from the fact that they were just talking with a buddy and they just had a seemingly a good stock tip. It does to me at least seem interesting from a legislative standpoint. Number four next up on the list is another sportsman, and i say that very lightly, and what i mean is that he owns the new york mets, i'm talking about stephen, a cohen, who is definitely a wall street legend there's a good chance.

You've heard of this name before in relation to point 72, which is his uh if you're in the amc gme community, he is one of the organizations that helped bail out melvin capital earlier this year when they basically lost everything with their game. Stop short well before point 72, he ran sac capital, advisors sac after his initials, and he did very very well. He made a lot of money and, as he grew and grew, and his bank account got bigger and bigger. You could pretty much argue that his morals and like the legalities, he just basically tossed them out the window, so what happened - and it's very well documented in this book black edge.

This is one that i read a couple years ago, very, very interesting, but what they would do is essentially his underlings would have this network of experts and a lot of the time it was in the pharmaceutical biotech world and it these experts that they would pay. Just to learn about stocks and organizations just to really get that expertise, knowledge. A lot of these people were the people who were looking into the trials running the trials deciding on the trials if they passed or failed and as they developed these relationships. Sometimes, information got out and right there, sec was there to capitalize on it now cohen himself really didn't get in much trouble and he did get in some, but other people were actually facing jail time.

Well with him, his defense was like hey, i'm just a bad supervisor. It's not like. I pressured them into it anyway. In 2013 he was a two-year ban for managing outside money and he was fined nearly two billion dollars, but for him he's a multi-multi-billionaire, so it was more of a speeding ticket and, as we know now, like point 72 is alive and well so it really didn't Damage him too much, but a very, very interesting case and, like i said he is a wall street legend, but there's a lot of questions of how we got to that status in the stephen cohen story.

Obviously, it's not the exact same that we're seeing in robin hood and citadel, but i think the overall ethos of it is very similar of you. Have these rich, powerful people who get there by? Let's call it questionable means, but they're smart in the way that they insulate themselves that if the justice ever comes knocking on their door, there's people under them who are going to fall first and if it ever does get up to their level. It's rarely ever jail time, it's more of like okay pay, a fine you're not going to manage someone's money, but it is interesting to note that we see it. That way of i mean most of the time when you become rich and powerful, like you, don't get there by accident you're kind of smart.

So it is interesting to know, for me at least that all these people that have a lot of power they're smart in the way that they insulate themselves and if they get there, it's almost a speeding ticket. I'm sure they have some sort of war chest set aside of like hey. If they come we'll pay this off but uh, it seems like they position themselves very, very well where they're, not the one who's ever gon na, have to face any form of prison. Time number three: this one comes to us from the world of cryptocurrency and in fact it's actually the most recent one to occur on this list, and it's just a classic story that involves abuse of power.

Nate chastain was the head of product and an executive at one of the biggest digital art exchanges openc.io. Basically, it allows you to buy and sell nft's non-fungible tokens and what nate did here to abuse his power? Was he created an elaborate network of wallets cryptocurrency wallets and right before openc would promote a particular piece of digital art. He would end up buying it days before the day before and when you promote something on your homepage, naturally there's more traffic. It drives up interest and that commonly drives up the price, so he would end up buying them for a cheap price right before they were displayed on openc's homepage and when it displayed the price went up, he would end up selling it.

Now. There are differing accounts of how much this scheme really made him. I'm seeing reports of 50 000 all the way up to half a million, but regardless it doesn't really matter because he was using inside information of openc with his position to know which ones were about to be promoted. He would buy them for cheap and as soon as the interest spiked sky high, he would sell it for a higher value at the time that i'm recording this.

It's actually so new. That nate has yet to face any legal issues, but he has lost his job at open c but from a higher level view. Obviously, you cannot abuse your position like this and in a world where there's already so many scams, cryptocurrency for a guy who i'm assuming would say that he actually likes the industry and wants it to grow. He's very much one of the problems bringing it back down because it scares people away whenever you hear scams and all this type of stealing and just illicit actions.

So it is very self-defeating for a guy who says he very much cares about the world and on this one, particularly as it develops. If there is any legal action i'll make sure to let you know number two. Of course, you cannot make a list about insider training without talking about enron. Now, if you're not familiar with the enron story, it is absolutely crazy at every single twist and turn your mind is blown and in reality it deserves its own video and there's there's already so many documentaries about it.

I highly recommend checking it out, but it makes this list because of the cfo jeffrey skilling, so he was the architect of enron and from a high level view, what happened was all their accounting techniques were complete? The company was way way way worse off than they made. It seem on paper and obviously they were just lying to the public. It got really bad when the cfo jeffrey started selling all of his shares and he was just basically trading on the fact that he knew the company was crap and in 2006 he was found guilty on 19 different charges, one of which was insider trading. But what's kind of interesting is the paradigm of he was very much caught between a rock and a hard spot, so he was selling off his own shares to protect his own financial interest before the information got out there.

But on the other side for him to not be caught with insider information, he would have basically had to admit to the entire public that he was completely defrauding him. So, no matter what this guy was gon na go down, but wait there's more. The enron story. Truly is the story that just keeps on giving.

There was another executive in the company by the name of lupi, who, let me think how to put this. He really liked to get down at strip clubs. In fact, he liked to get down on strip clubs. So much during his time at enron that there was an actress at one of these said strip clubs who ended up getting impregnated by mr pie, his wife found out about it and divorced him and because of the divorce settlement of her getting half of it.

He had to sell 250 million dollars of enron stocks and this all happened months before the company went absolutely put now. There are some allegations that this was actually kind of planned of. Like hang on it's going down, you should divorce me because then you're legally entitled to half that really hasn't been proven, but in 2008 the sec did come after him. He ended up paying a fine of 31.5 million dollars, still basically saving 220 million and he never really did admit guilt or anything like that.

He just paid that fine and moved on with his day. So hey, that's, that's one crazy way to potentially avoid insider training. I guess you just got ta impregnate a stripper and then lose a divorce settlement number one. Let's talk about martha stewart, the boss, lady of them all slinging stock and slinging gracious living temps.

I don't know if you're like me, you probably heard that martha stewart got in trouble for insider trading, but you might be a little bit murky on the details. If i'm being completely honest now that i've looked into it, it is very far away from the most egregious malicious case of insider trading. Here's the headlines of what you need to know. It involved a biopharmaceutical company called i'm clone systems and here's what happened in 2002.

Her stockbroker, a guy by the name of peter, called her up and said: yo martha, the ceo of the company, the ceo's daughter and some of my major clients are all unloading. This stock, because word is they're about to get some very bad news from the fda and martha said yo word all right, i'm going to sell mine too, so, basically right there, she traded on insider information. Ultimately, she was convicted of felony charges of conspiracy, making false statements as part of a federal investigation and obstruction. She ended up serving five months at a federal facility.

As i was doing the research for this particular video. I saw biotech biopharma medical supplies all over the place as it relates to insider trading, and, if you think about it, it really does make sense, because either the test goes well or it doesn't go well either the fda does approve or it doesn't improve. It is very, very binary, and if that information is lit out illicitly right before it's made public someone could create a huge position or, in martha stewart's case, unload a huge position right before the news really hits the news wires. And if you play it right, you could either save yourself a lot of money or you couldn't make yourself a lot of money, and it very much is just the binary nature of the pharmaceutical world, but at least in martha stewart's case she ended up getting out Of prison and now she's best friends with snoop dogg, so i think for her it was a win-win.

I think it's pretty evident that insider trading is prevalent within our current stock market system. All the way from high up executives in a company trading on their own company's information, all the way down to a buddy of a buddy of a buddy, giving a tip at a golf course. Clearly, insider trading, non-public information. If it's out there, it's gon na be abused, and i think it's just a part of human psychology that greed that fear yeah people are going to trade on it.

Now. I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to completely get rid of insider trading, but some of the most egregious cases, especially at our highest political leader levels, federal reserve chairman these executive at companies. To me that stuff is it's just sickening, especially when it gets into the political domain and for me, like yeah, okay, the sec chairman. He does recently have some comments that he is working to get rid of that, at least at these highest levels, but some of it is truly just so nauseating and i hope that we trend in the way that those egregious cases, i hope that they get stomped Out and get stomped out quickly, but i don't know, as i was researching this, i just the the amount of cases i saw and the amount of things that have gone down of people just abusing their position and their power truly truly insane.

Now, obviously, i only talked about five cases, five of the most notorious cases in this video. If you think i missed an important one, please let me know in a comment below there are many many more. These are just some of the ones that have made the biggest headlines, i think, is the easiest way to put it. If you enjoyed this video, i would appreciate it if you could help me out with the algorithm dropping a like leaving a comment.

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