You can’t have missed the insider-dealing news at this point. Just look at the SEC go!
Federal authorities said that they had exposed one of the most far-reaching insider trading schemes on Wall Street in decades, involving four investment banks and a web of hedge funds, day traders, lawyers and even a few supervisors, who upon discovering evidence of insider trading, blackmailed the traders to keep quiet about it…
Linda C. Thomsen, chief of enforcement at the Securities and Exchange Commission, described the scheme as one of the most “pervasive Wall Street insider trading rings since the days of Ivan Boesky and Dennis Levine.”
But what’s missing here? It takes over 600 words before the NYT bothers to tell us how much money is involved in this “far-reaching case” — and DealBook never tells us at all. Do you think that’s because, well, the amounts of money involved are pissant? The biggest crimes netted $6 million over 5 years; the smallest, just $9,500.
Check out the video of the SEC’s press conference: the deals they talk about netted profits of between $10,000 and $50,000. No wonder you’ve never heard of any of the hedge funds involved in this scheme: that kind of money might be nice for an individual, but it’s not going to do much for a big hedge fund’s total returns.
In other words, this is not Boesky II, no matter how hard the SEC tries to spin it that way. Of course, the SEC has a mandate to go after insider dealing no matter how big or small. But this particular scheme looks like it’s more the latter than the former.