Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is the day at All Crashes and Barns. Yeah, hello,
Speaker 2: and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast. You're a weekly
Speaker 2: podcast where we talk about stuff related to money. I'm
Speaker 2: Matt Levigne and I write the Money Stuff column for
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an
Speaker 1: anchor for Bloomberg Television. I also write a newsletter called BTFIQ.
Speaker 2: Katie, you're like gracing us with a little bit of
Speaker 2: your presence between sessions at the big ETF conference.
Speaker 1: Huh, Yeah, you know, we were well. I was joking
Speaker 1: as I walked in ten minutes late. Matt had been
Speaker 1: sitting here miked up. There's an ETF conference at Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: It's Thursday when we're recording this. Matt's a celebrity in
Speaker 1: a lot of context. I'm a celebrity in an ETF context,
Speaker 1: and you know, walking through an ETF event, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get anywhere on time.
Speaker 2: I feel like this is a challenge and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: have to come back to the ETF.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, now you're gonna walk upstairs and everyone's
Speaker 1: gonna just stop in their tracks.
Speaker 2: Plimberg once side a crypto conference in which I interviewed
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed on stage. A real a real highlight.
Speaker 2: But at a Boomberg crypto conference, I'm like a little
Speaker 2: bit of a celebrity, and like before this interview, people
Speaker 2: were coming up to me and being like, I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: And then after this interview I walked back to the
Speaker 2: green room with Sam Bankman Freed and like he yeah,
Speaker 2: is a celebrity. Yeah, people were pushing each other as
Speaker 2: loud to get to Sam Bankman Freed.
Speaker 1: There's this is better times for him certainly. Levels Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a real uh like a time capse happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like it was like summer twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: I introduced him on stage, said something like Sam Bankman
Speaker 2: Fried probably needs no introduction. He's probably bought most of
Speaker 2: your companies. Like this is back between like when everything
Speaker 2: else scratched and when.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Terror Luna stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man. Anyway, well, anyway, what are.
Speaker 2: You talking about today, Katie.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about the onions and info wars. We're
Speaker 1: willing to talk about some proof that everything is securities fraud.
Speaker 1: I've described that correctly, right, yeah, okay, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about Ken Peterman who was fired and
Speaker 1: then right, but did he sit so the Onion, this
Speaker 1: was interesting. I haven't checked in on this story in
Speaker 1: a while, and then you published on it, and I
Speaker 1: thought that the Onion was for sure buying info Wars.
Speaker 1: That's the service level headline reading that I had done.
Speaker 1: But turns out not exactly right.
Speaker 2: So info Wars Alex Chrenz's company that he used to
Speaker 2: spread various writing conspiracy theories, one of which is that
Speaker 2: the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. The parents of
Speaker 2: the Sandy Hook children who are killed suit him and
Speaker 2: won like a billion dollars of damages, which is considerably
Speaker 2: more money than Alex Chans and info Wars have, and
Speaker 2: so they filed for bankruptcy, and you know, like kind
Speaker 2: of that means that the Sandihug parents kind of own
Speaker 2: his assets kind of, but like what it literally means
Speaker 2: is that the bankruptcy trustee has an auction of the assets,
Speaker 2: which is basically like the info Wars like company and
Speaker 2: brand and website and stuff, and the highest bidder at
Speaker 2: the auction wins the assets, and like the money from
Speaker 2: the bid goes to Alex Jones's creditors, which means mainly
Speaker 2: the Sandiak families, but there are also some other people
Speaker 2: who he owes money to, either because he borrowed money
Speaker 2: from them or because they also sued him. And so
Speaker 2: they had an auction and there were two bidders, and
Speaker 2: one of them was this thing called First United American
Speaker 2: Companies FUAK, which is like kind of Alex Jones. It's
Speaker 2: like someone's putting up money for Alex Jones to buy
Speaker 2: back Info Wars so you can continue running it his
Speaker 2: Info Wars. And then the other bidder was the Onion
Speaker 2: or it's corporate parrot, which has the great name Global
Speaker 2: Tetrahedron llcfully great name, like really like the Onion. You know,
Speaker 2: although at the corporate structure they're.
Speaker 1: Committed to comedy, they committed to the bid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they were they bid for the assets,
Speaker 2: and they had less cash than FUAK, but what they
Speaker 2: had was the support of the Sandy Hook parents because
Speaker 2: if you think about the parents, like one thing they
Speaker 2: want is money. Another thing they want is for Alex
Speaker 2: Jones to stop running Info Wars and stop broadcasting conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: And then the third thing they want is that I
Speaker 2: think they liked what the onions plans for info Wars were,
Speaker 2: which is sort of like running as a satire of
Speaker 2: the conspiracy side. And also I think you know, there
Speaker 2: was like a teaming up with every Town for Gun Safety,
Speaker 2: the Eco Bloomberg fact initiative. They would use info Wars
Speaker 2: in part to sort of work against gun violence. And
Speaker 2: so the parents liked that plan and they supported it.
Speaker 2: And so you had this auction in which on the
Speaker 2: one side was a higher cash bid from FUAC and
Speaker 2: on the other side was like the bid that was
Speaker 2: supported by the Lion's share of the creditors. And so
Speaker 2: the bankruptcy t you said that the Onion won, and
Speaker 2: then FUEK went to court to stop it, and the
Speaker 2: judge said, actually, this was not a fair auction. You
Speaker 2: have to run the auction again and kind of give
Speaker 2: it the highest bidter.
Speaker 1: So is that what happens now that we have another auction.
Speaker 2: I think what happens now is we have another auction.
Speaker 2: And it seems like the decision was that the bankruptcy
Speaker 2: trustees procedures weren't good enough, and like you can have
Speaker 2: another auction where the Onion could win. The way it
Speaker 2: worked is that FUEX bid was cash. It's three point
Speaker 2: five million dollars. The Onion's bid was one point seventy
Speaker 2: five million dollars in cash. And also the parents, the
Speaker 2: Sandy Hook parents, signed a waiver basically saying whatever money
Speaker 2: other creditors, other people who ALEX, JANDZ have money to
Speaker 2: whatever money the other creditors would get from any other bid,
Speaker 2: they will get one hundred thousand dollars more from this
Speaker 2: Onion bid. So basically, like you know, if the Onion
Speaker 2: puts in one point seven five million dollars, as much
Speaker 2: as all of that can go to the other creditors,
Speaker 2: whereas a FUEC puts in three five million dollars, you
Speaker 2: know three quarters of that or something is going to
Speaker 2: go to the Santiagog parents because they have most of
Speaker 2: the claims and pankruptcy. And so because of that waiver,
Speaker 2: they could go to the court and say, look, we
Speaker 2: can guarantee that the other creditors will get more money
Speaker 2: from our bid than from any other bid, and like,
Speaker 2: these creditors support it. So it's the highest bid even
Speaker 2: though it has less money.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so what needs to happen in round two of
Speaker 1: this auction for the Onion to be successful, do they
Speaker 1: just simply need more money.
Speaker 2: Well, so there's a couple of things. One is that
Speaker 2: like the procedure at the auction got sort of wonky
Speaker 2: at the end, where like it was supposed to be
Speaker 2: an open auction and it sort of turned to a
Speaker 2: sealed bid auction. And part of that is because the
Speaker 2: Onion bid was we will pay one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: more than anyone else. So there's not really a point
Speaker 2: of having multiple rounds of bids. But you could imagine
Speaker 2: just structuring the bid again so that they can do
Speaker 2: a more open auction and then sort of coming too
Speaker 2: the same result. The other possibility is that, you know,
Speaker 2: a reader suggested this to me, like if FUEX says,
Speaker 2: this waiver from the parents isn't real, like it doesn't
Speaker 2: count as real value. And I think the trustee argued,
Speaker 2: and the Onion argues, and I think it's clearly true
Speaker 2: that this is like a normal way to provide value
Speaker 2: in bankruptcy. You know, I wrote about credit bids where
Speaker 2: the creditor who has a mortgage on a house could
Speaker 2: get that house without paying more cash for it. Because
Speaker 2: they can bid the amount of their lean Here. You know,
Speaker 2: these parents have a huge claim in the bankruptcy, and
Speaker 2: if they're wave a portion of their claim, then that
Speaker 2: provides value to the other creditors. But if you don't
Speaker 2: like that, then the answer is finance it. The answer
Speaker 2: is the onion could go out and borrow like two
Speaker 2: million dollars from a bank and pay it back. That
Speaker 2: two million dollars would then go to the Santiego parents
Speaker 2: when they win the auction, and then they could rout
Speaker 2: it back to the Onion and then to the bank. Right,
Speaker 2: if the parents want a non financial benefit from this
Speaker 2: and like are bidding a portion of their claims, you
Speaker 2: could probably find a way to like get the bank
Speaker 2: to put up the money and then have a circle
Speaker 2: back to the bank. So that might be another thing
Speaker 2: that happens here.
Speaker 1: Do you think that something that that actually would? I mean,
Speaker 1: how do the bids change? But also like how the
Speaker 1: auction change is when it's run again.
Speaker 2: I think that if the auction is run again it
Speaker 2: might be more transparent or whatever. But the trustee thinks
Speaker 2: that the waiver of claims provides a lot of value,
Speaker 2: and I think he's right. And it's sort of hard
Speaker 2: to imagine the trustee changing his mind on that, And
Speaker 2: I don't think the court ruled that he was wrong.
Speaker 2: But you could imagine something where the Onion puts up
Speaker 2: more cash and then gets the cash back so that
Speaker 2: they have a higher optical cash bid, but like ultimately
Speaker 2: come to the same place.
Speaker 1: Well, this will be interesting to follow, but I kind
Speaker 1: of wish that I just stayed in my ignorant little
Speaker 1: bubble and only had read the first headline, because it
Speaker 1: seems like really good poetic justice that the Onion, with
Speaker 1: the backing of the parents would buy info wars.
Speaker 2: I still would guess that that's what's going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Target. Do you remember the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three Pride marketing event from Target?
Speaker 2: No? I remember solely the controversy about it.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it either. I also remember the controversy,
Speaker 1: but only very vaguely.
Speaker 2: I mean, they had like LGBT Pride themed merchandise at
Speaker 2: like the end of the aisle or something people got
Speaker 2: really mad about.
Speaker 1: It was this before or after the bud Light thing.
Speaker 2: I want to say it was after the buddlet I think,
Speaker 2: but I'm not sure. Man, is it around the same
Speaker 2: time it was after.
Speaker 1: The bud was after man, why do the companies keep
Speaker 1: doing this? It led to a boycott, the stock went down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Target has a lot of problems that aren't related to this,
Speaker 1: whereas it feels like the bud Light thing like really
Speaker 1: jeopardized bud Light's position, as.
Speaker 2: The bud Light thing was like a sort of switch
Speaker 2: flipped on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in any case, security is fraud.
Speaker 2: So you do something in the stock goes down, someone's
Speaker 2: going to see you for securities for And here what
Speaker 2: happened is that America First legal group, like a Stephen
Speaker 2: Miller backed like sort of Trump official backed, anti Woke,
Speaker 2: anti DEI sort of legal entity.
Speaker 1: Very in vogue right now, it.
Speaker 2: Feels right now. They sued Target for securities fraud. And
Speaker 2: what they said was that you did this thing, you like,
Speaker 2: did this marketing event, you didn't disclose that it would
Speaker 2: cause a customer boycott and your stock went down, and
Speaker 2: so therefore we were defrauded because we bought the stock
Speaker 2: not knowing that you were doing this thing that would
Speaker 2: cause a customer boycott, and then when the stock went down,
Speaker 2: we lost because of that front, which struck me at
Speaker 2: the time. This is they sued in like August the
Speaker 2: last year. It struck me as sort of a crazy
Speaker 2: theory because it's not like Target was concealing that they
Speaker 2: were doing a Pride marketing event. It was marketing. It
Speaker 2: was quite public and you might say, well, okay, but
Speaker 2: they didn't warn investors that the event might lead to
Speaker 2: a boycott. But they actually did do that, Like there's
Speaker 2: actually a risk factor in their annual report saying that
Speaker 2: our position or perceived lack of position on environmental, social
Speaker 2: and governance ESG matters such as sustainability, responsible sourcing, and diversity,
Speaker 2: equity and inclusion de and I could harm a reputation
Speaker 2: and could result in consumer boycotts.
Speaker 1: That's pretty clear, Well not enough, Matt.
Speaker 2: That you know, you're saying our DEI initiatives could like
Speaker 2: harm a reputation and lead to consumer boycotts. And so
Speaker 2: what the people suing said is, well, okay, you said that,
Speaker 2: but you didn't say specifically this twenty twenty three marketing
Speaker 2: initiative could lead to a consumer boycott. You didn't specifically
Speaker 2: call out this thing as a problem. And last week
Speaker 2: a judge agreed with them and said, yes, this is
Speaker 2: not sufficient disclosure, and the case can go forward because
Speaker 2: Target really might have defrauded shaholders by not telling them
Speaker 2: about the possibility that there would be a boycott for
Speaker 2: this marketing initiative.
Speaker 1: So that's wild.
Speaker 2: It's pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you talk about this in the column. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of fun to imagine, like what does this
Speaker 1: mean going forward? Like when you see a Target ad
Speaker 1: on TV. I like to imagine, like you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of medicine and like pharmaceutical ads, they have
Speaker 1: that sped up voice talk about the side effects, like
Speaker 1: they should have that at the end of every commercial
Speaker 1: that's sped up voice.
Speaker 2: You No, it's not in the ad, that's in the
Speaker 2: ten K that the securities fields have to be much
Speaker 2: much longer and say every possible risk.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that's what they should They should
Speaker 1: go overboard.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's really what it means. I think
Speaker 2: what it means is like, technically this is about disclosure,
Speaker 2: but it's not really because you can't possibly disclose everything
Speaker 2: that could go wrong, right, Like you have a risk
Speaker 2: factor and that's like what we do about DEI could
Speaker 2: cause a customer boycott. That's pretty good. That's like a
Speaker 2: pretty specific disclosure, but it's not specific enough. I think
Speaker 2: that what it means on its face is that everything
Speaker 2: is security is ruight. What it means on its face
Speaker 2: is that if you do something then the stock price
Speaker 2: goes down, doesn't matter what your disclosure said, there's some
Speaker 2: problem with the disclosure. No matter what, there's always something
Speaker 2: that you could have said that you didn't say, and
Speaker 2: you can always get sued. And so it's a true
Speaker 2: case of everything is security is for rud It's a
Speaker 2: true case of like any bad thing that a company
Speaker 2: does that causes it stock price to go down, it
Speaker 2: can be security as fraud without worrying about what its disclosure.
Speaker 2: So that's like one possible reading, and I think that's
Speaker 2: the right reading. I think the right reading is that
Speaker 2: this is a conservative legal group picking a place to
Speaker 2: file this case with like a very republican judge. And
Speaker 2: this sort of like anti dei, anti woke advocacy is
Speaker 2: like on the rise politically. And I've been writing about
Speaker 2: like the idea that everything is security is rude for
Speaker 2: a long time, right, the idea that like anything you
Speaker 2: don't like that a public company does you can say, well,
Speaker 2: what they really did is they felt to disclose it,
Speaker 2: and so it's security is fraud. And when I started
Speaker 2: writing about this like a decade ago, it was because
Speaker 2: the New York Attorney General was suing i think Exxon
Speaker 2: Mobile for not disclosing enough about climate change and basically saying, well,
Speaker 2: climate change is this like fraud political topic. But we
Speaker 2: can point to your securities disclosure and say, oh, you
Speaker 2: didn't like warn investors enough that like climate change was
Speaker 2: coming and it would be bad for oil companies, and
Speaker 2: therefore you're committing securities run. Ultimately, the New York ag
Speaker 2: lost that case, but that was like where this idea started.
Speaker 2: It was this idea that like, we can use securities
Speaker 2: laws to pursue the substance of political purposes. And what's
Speaker 2: happening now is like the same thing, but like from
Speaker 2: the other side politically, right, Like what's happening now is
Speaker 2: like if you don't like DEI initiatives, you can sue
Speaker 2: and call them securities fraud and like now you can
Speaker 2: win or you can like you know, your case doesn't
Speaker 2: get dismissed. You've seen in the current sec like there's
Speaker 2: been a lot of securities cases about climate disclosure. There's
Speaker 2: a case that I talk about a lot. This is
Speaker 2: a long time ago that the SEC sued Sea World
Speaker 2: for mistreating its orcas with Securities Red, and it's like
Speaker 2: all these like things that you can wrap up into
Speaker 2: securities for Red. In the next four years with like
Speaker 2: a very Republican judiciary and like a Trump sec it's
Speaker 2: going to be the reverse. It's going to be everything
Speaker 2: that conservatives don't like is going to be Security's rud.
Speaker 1: How does that make you feel because that feels like
Speaker 1: a lot of fodder for the money stuff column and
Speaker 1: potentially the podcast. Does that excite you or do you
Speaker 1: feel tired?
Speaker 2: I feel tired. This decision seems wrong and not like
Speaker 2: traditional securities fraud reasoning. So I think there's going to
Speaker 2: be a lot of stuff where it's like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: doesn't really make sense. Yeah, you know, fodder for the column.
Speaker 1: Totally different from esg Ordi. But in just talking about
Speaker 1: the disclosures and like thinking about, you know, how does
Speaker 1: this change things about you know, how companies disclose possible risks.
Speaker 1: It kind of reminded me of that short seller I
Speaker 1: think it was Carstille Capital with that very tongue in
Speaker 1: cheek letter, which was basically just like, assume we don't
Speaker 1: hold the stock anymore. I don't know, I could see
Speaker 1: some parallels there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's harder to do in like the
Speaker 2: corporate risk factor. Yeah, context, you can't be a sarcastic.
Speaker 1: No, that's too bad. I do wonder at what point
Speaker 1: you know it turns in on itself if it does
Speaker 1: it all, Like if you're disclosing every possible risk factor,
Speaker 1: if the stock does go down because of that risk factor,
Speaker 1: I mean, could they then get sued because hello, you
Speaker 1: knew this was going to you know, potentially hurt the
Speaker 1: stock price and you did it anyway? Or is that silly?
Speaker 2: Technically that's not a securities FROD clan, I'd say, like
Speaker 2: state law fiduciary duty clan, Yeah, which people are less
Speaker 2: excited to bring for various reasons. But now sure, I mean,
Speaker 2: like even when it's in a risk factor, like often
Speaker 2: what happens is like a company says, if we got hacked,
Speaker 2: that would be really bad for us, and then like
Speaker 2: once they get hacked, it's like you have this risk
Speaker 2: factor saying if we get hacked, but you already got hacked,
Speaker 2: you haven't updated that risk factor, Like you're deceiving us
Speaker 2: by saying if we get hacked, when you did get hacked.
Speaker 2: So like there's a lot of that where like even
Speaker 2: the exist thin so that the risk factor like creates
Speaker 2: a potential for more liability because like you have to
Speaker 2: update the risk factor to to sort of cover what's
Speaker 2: actually happened already.
Speaker 1: How should be on this section?
Speaker 2: My summing up would be, like I've said for ten
Speaker 2: years that every bad thing that a public company does
Speaker 2: is security is for raud. And like what's happening now
Speaker 2: is that what counts as a bad thing is shifting, right,
Speaker 2: Like you might think that, like polluting is bad, but
Speaker 2: the new vibe is that having ESG policies is bad.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of stuff is going to be
Speaker 2: treated as bad and is then going to be treated
Speaker 2: as securities fraud because everything is security is for I don't.
Speaker 1: Know everything subjective. What is bad? I don't know. You
Speaker 1: know what's bad? No being fired? But you know what
Speaker 1: else I don't want that super bad is insider trading.
Speaker 2: Wow, I don't want to be fired. I like insider trading.
Speaker 2: Oh I mean no, I mean I enjoyed writing about
Speaker 2: insider trading. I have a soft spot for insider traders,
Speaker 2: so incredibly a sec case this week. Ken Peterman was
Speaker 2: the sea of a pretty small company called ComTech Telecommunications,
Speaker 2: and the following sequence of events allegedly occurred. One he
Speaker 2: got like their earnings results like a few weeks before
Speaker 2: they were announced that they were terrible. Two he got
Speaker 2: called into a meeting with like a lawyer doing an
Speaker 2: investigation of his alleged sexual relationship with a subordinate. In
Speaker 2: this meeting, he won confessed to that relationship, and two
Speaker 2: confessed that he had had someone else watched the like
Speaker 2: mandatory sexual harassment training video for him because he was
Speaker 2: too busy.
Speaker 1: To do it.
Speaker 2: Just like right, right, Probably not, But I write a
Speaker 2: lot about like accounting firm partners or whatever, who you
Speaker 2: know don't take their regulatory continuing education or civement seriously.
Speaker 2: But if you're like doing sexual arrassment, you should really
Speaker 2: watch the sexual arrassment video. You'll learn something.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe he thought it wasn't, which is also why
Speaker 1: he should have watched the video, but I maybe realized
Speaker 1: the error of his ways.
Speaker 2: Anyway, anyway, so that happened at this meeting and shortly
Speaker 2: after the meeting, the board called him and said we're
Speaker 2: going to fire you for cause, and then he called
Speaker 2: his breaker and tried to sell all of his stock
Speaker 2: in the company, sell it all. Then the next day
Speaker 2: the company announced that he was fired. In the stock
Speaker 2: felt like twenty seven percent, and then like a few
Speaker 2: days later they announced their earnings of the stockfell even more.
Speaker 2: So by selling the stock, he avoided something like twelve
Speaker 2: thousand dollars of losses, which is like, this is a
Speaker 2: small company, right, right, the SEC says is inside of trading.
Speaker 2: You read the description of what he was doing, he
Speaker 2: was in a blackout period, right, So the company had
Speaker 2: a policy saying executives can't trade the stock in the
Speaker 2: like couple of weeks before earnings, right because like they
Speaker 2: worry about exactly what happened, which is that here he
Speaker 2: knew the earnings before they were public, and he was
Speaker 2: trying to trade stocks during the earnings, and so he
Speaker 2: tried to sell stock and his broker was like, aren't
Speaker 2: you in a blackout period for executives, And he said,
Speaker 2: I'm not an executive anymore. Yeah, he's not an insider.
Speaker 2: It's not insider trading.
Speaker 1: That seems pretty water tight.
Speaker 2: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Promise.
Speaker 2: But in any case, it's it's a little unclear what
Speaker 2: his what his defense or what his resuoning was. But
Speaker 2: like to be like one, you're not an insider anymore,
Speaker 2: not subject to the black out. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the company told him he was subject to the black
Speaker 2: eyed even after he was fired, and like he probably was.
Speaker 2: But there's an argument, Ah, I didn't know a subject
Speaker 2: to a black euy i'd been fired. But then the
Speaker 2: other thing is like I just think that you should
Speaker 2: be able to do a little insider trading out of
Speaker 2: like peak, he was mad at them, they fired him.
Speaker 2: Why should he keep owning the.
Speaker 1: Store all entitled to fits of passion where we just
Speaker 1: sell a lot of stocks.
Speaker 2: Right, it's not that he was I mean it probably was,
Speaker 2: but like it maybe wasn't that he was like trying
Speaker 2: to sell the stock before it went down. He was
Speaker 2: just like mad at the company. Didn't want to own
Speaker 2: the stock anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very reason. It's all been ticked off before it,
Speaker 1: so would it.
Speaker 2: I should be a defense there, not real there maybe.
Speaker 1: Hey Ken Peterman, if you're listening, but I mean it's
Speaker 1: insider trading whatever, But what if the earnings had been
Speaker 1: really great and the stock actually went up by twenty
Speaker 1: five percent after earnings, but he had sold all his stock.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you know, he would still be
Speaker 1: in hot water?
Speaker 2: No, because the only really been cases where it's like
Speaker 2: you had material non public information and like active on it,
Speaker 2: and here in your hypothetically it wouldn't seem like he
Speaker 2: was acting on material information because it went the other way.
Speaker 1: He was just following his emotions and selling his emotions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, man, like you like you sell
Speaker 2: the stock like an hour after get fired. You're not
Speaker 2: like making a calculation of Like no, maybe you are,
Speaker 2: I don't know what. Once about the CEO of Ias
Speaker 2: the Dutch Socker Club, like yeah, they hired him and
Speaker 2: after his job interview, he was like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be the CEO. I crushed that that maybe the CEO.
Speaker 2: I went on the stock of the company in the ceo.
Speaker 2: So he went out and bought a bunch of stock.
Speaker 2: And then the Christen did the job offer because they're
Speaker 2: like he's inside of treading.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Ultimately he got like a different job there, Like it
Speaker 2: was I toned down the punishment, but they initially thought
Speaker 2: it was not okay for him to buy the stock
Speaker 2: before he was announced the CEO.
Speaker 1: That feels like thin cruel, But what do I know.
Speaker 1: I cover ETFs in a newsletter called Etfiq.
Speaker 2: People love it in the ETF world. You're a celebrity.
Speaker 1: I mention it because we got an email to the
Speaker 1: podcast mail bag asking why I don't promote the fact
Speaker 1: that I also have a newsletter. But it just felt,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Some emailers to the podcast wish that it was much
Speaker 2: much more about ETFs, some others much less.
Speaker 1: Some writers to the mail bag wish that we didn't
Speaker 1: talk about ETF so much. But thank you for writing it,
Speaker 1: and thank you for reading etfiq mail Bag. Hey write
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