如何杜绝内幕交易

    说起内幕交易和高管，市场人士都心照不宣。按照定义，高管每次买进或卖出股票，都是一次内幕交易。CEO们是否掌握了其他人所不知晓的公司信息？那还用说。他们利用这些信息进行交易吗？太多人似乎都是这么干的。

    这也不是什么秘密。有一个投资学派专门就关注高管交易——有些投资者称其为合法的内幕交易。

    因此，《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）能搜罗这么多涉及高管们进行的问题内幕交易就没什么好奇怪的了。当然，正如其他人所指，《华尔街日报》的研究本身就存在缺陷，因为它援引的数据具有误导性。

    但揪住这个问题纠缠不休的人根本就没有抓住重点。《华尔街日报》根本没必要进行自己的研究。过去两年，美国证券交易委员会（Securities and Exchange Commission，SEC）已逮住了众多涉嫌内幕交易的对冲基金，数目惊人，其中有些基金就得到了公司高管的帮助。美国证券交易委员会正在推进的一个案子盯上了是顶级对冲基金经理SAC Capital的史蒂文·科恩。最近，美国证券交易委员会指控科恩的一名前交易员参与了史上最大的内幕交易之一。而且，大量研究早已显示，内部人士的表现总是优于大盘，就算是专业全职投资者也很少能复制这样的表现。

    十年前，美国证券交易委员会曾经推出了一个体系，希望藉此限制、甚至根除高管通过内幕信息获利。美国证券交易委员会鼓励（注意，不是要求）高管们提前较长一段时间买进（更多情况是卖出）公司股票。因此，如果股票出售几个月以前就已经安排好了，而且是定期的，那么就不存在欺诈，对不对?

    不完全是这样。事实证明，这些计划比美国证券交易委员会设想的更为灵活。而且，这还不是它们最大的缺陷。在大多数显而易见的高管内幕交易案例中，CEO们总是能神奇地在公司发布坏消息（比方说，本季度业绩弱于预期）之前，抛售一大笔股票，少损失数十万、甚至数百万美元。然而，其他股东并不知情，因此就会蒙受损失。

    但提前设定的计划并不能阻止这类行为。因为CEO有权决定什么时候让市场知道公司业务恶化。那么，选择在自己减持后再宣布利空消息似乎也是自然而言的事了。

    科罗拉多大学波尔得分校（University of Colorado Boulder）的商学教授艾伦·扎格莱泽研究过这些计划。他说，这些计划的设立方式差别很大，但没有证据显示，这些高管在安排预设售股时毫不知情。事实上，一项针对高管股票期权计划的最新研究显示，公司宣布坏消息的时间点更多是在股票授予计划到期后，而不是到期前。

    When it comes to insider trading and executives, the market has always responded with a wink and a nod. By definition, every time an executive buys or sells a stock it's insider trading. Do CEOs have information that no one else has about their company? You betcha. Do they trade on that information? Too many of them seem to.

    And this is no secret. There is a whole school of investing devoted to watching the trades of executives -- it's viewed by some investors as legitimate insider trading.

    So it's no surprise that the Wall Street Journal was able to round up a number of questionable examples of insider trading by executives. The WSJ's study itself, as others have pointed out, was flawed. It was set up in a way that was the data equivalent of entrapment.

    But those who are harping on that are missing the point. The WSJ didn't need to do its own study. In the past two years, the Securities and Exchange Commission has nabbed an alarming number of hedge funders for insider trading, some with the help of top executives. The SEC seems to be building a case against top hedge fund manager Steven Cohen of SAC Capital -- it recently charged one of Cohen's former traders with one of the biggest insider trading schemes in history. What's more, there are plenty of studies out there already that show insiders routinely beat the market, something very few full-time professional investors are able to replicate.

    A decade ago, the SEC came up with a system it thought would limit or eliminate executives from profiting from insider information. The agency encouraged executives, but didn't require them, to lock in dates well in advance for when they would buy or, more often, sell their companies' shares. If stock sales were planned for months, and were routine, then there would be no ability to cheat. Right?

    Not exactly. The plans proved to be more flexible than the SEC envisioned. But that's not their biggest weakness. In most instances of apparent insider trading by an executive, a CEO miraculously appears to be able to dump a big chunk of their stock holdings right before the company reports bad news, like the quarter was worse than expected, saving them hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars. Other shareholders, not in the know, take the hit.

    But a pre-set stock plan won't stop that. That's because a CEO has the ability within some reason to decide when to let the market know that his business has taken a turn for the worse. Seems natural to release news that will be bad for shares on a day when you are holding less of those said shares.

    Alan Jagolinzer, a business professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied these plans, says there is a lot of variation in the way the plans are set up, but there isn't any evidence to suggest that executives are kept in the dark as to when their pre-set sales will occur. Indeed, a recent study of executive stock option plans found that companies were more likely to announce bad news in the days after a stock grant expired than before.