Ask YC: Using Employee Stock Purchase plans to cover short positions?

1 pointsby drandallover 16 years ago

Can individual companies enable this sort of behavior legally? Is this more of a technical or ethical question?<p>Edit: this sort of behavior: short selling your own stock

3 comments

drandallover 16 years ago

Follow up - theoretically, if I thought my employer's stock was going to go down but wasn't privy to nonpublic info, could I put on a short position to lock in gains or ride out a dip? Or is just working for that co enough to make that illegal?

olefooover 16 years ago

Talk to a lawyer; but I'm pretty sure that using employee owned stock as collateral for covering a short position is illegal.

noodleover 16 years ago

i <i>think</i> this is more an ethical decision. however, if i were an employee and my company offered me stock options instead of a check, i'd be looking for a new job.