{"id":179027,"date":"2018-06-12T19:53:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T00:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/12\/i-am-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-in-here\/"},"modified":"2018-06-12T19:53:00","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T00:53:00","slug":"i-am-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-in-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/06\/12\/i-am-shocked-shocked-to-find-that-gambling-is-going-on-in-here\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Shocked \u2014 Shocked \u2014 to Find That Gambling Is Going on in Here!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"240\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SjbPi00k_ME?rel=0\" width=\"320\"><\/iframe> <i>Your winnings, sir<\/i><\/div>\n<p>The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has looked at stock buybacks, and <a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2018\/06\/11\/sec-frets-about-share-buybacks-torrent-of-corporate-trading-dominating-todays-market-and-short-term-financial-engineering\/\">has discovered to its chagrin that it looks a lot like stock manipulation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">A study by the SEC of 385 recent share-buyback <i>announcement<\/i>s \u2014 this is when companies <i>announce<\/i> how much money they will spend <i>in the future<\/i> on buying back their own shares, but before they actually begin buying them \u2014 found:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">Share-buyback announcements led to \u201cabnormal returns\u201d in the share price over the next 30 days.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: blue;\">Executives used this share price surge to cash out.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIn fact, twice as many companies have insiders selling in the eight  days after a buyback announcement as sell on an ordinary day. So right  after the company tells the market that the stock is cheap, executives  overwhelmingly decide to sell,\u201d explained SEC Commissioner Robert  Jackson Jr. \u2013 appointed by President Trump and sworn in earlier this  year \u2013 in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/news\/speech\/speech-jackson-061118\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">speech<\/a> today. He went on:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">And, in the process, executives take a lot of cash off  the table. On average, in the days before a buyback announcement,  executives trade in relatively small amounts\u2014less than $100,000 worth.  But during the eight days following a buyback announcement, executives  on average sell more than $500,000 worth of stock each day\u2014a fivefold  increase. Thus, executives personally capture the benefit of the  short-term stock-price pop created by the buyback announcement:<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThis trading is not necessarily illegal,\u201d he added. \u201cBut it is troubling, because it is yet another piece of evidence that executives are spending more time on short-term stock trading than long-term value creation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gee, you think? <\/p>\n<p>Stock buybacks used to be banned, they were considered illegal stock manipulation, but Ronald Reagan rescinded that rule, and the ensuing orgy of looting was the inevitable result.<\/p>\n<p>God bless America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your winnings, sir The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has looked at stock buybacks, and has discovered to its chagrin that it looks a lot like stock manipulation: A study by the SEC of 385 recent share-buyback announcements \u2014 this is when companies announce how much money they will spend in the future on buying &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[365,368,456,437],"class_list":["post-179027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-finance","tag-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}