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dacapo

macrumors 6502
Jan 25, 2010
403
10
Up ranked and agreed...

Thanks, but this whole concept of ranking a comment is pretty scary. :D

In any case, this kind of executives selling their company shares is usually frowned upon. If all the executives did this, the negative PR would be brutal.

Think about it... If you were the CEO of a company, would you want your SVPs to sell off the company shares at every opportunity? :eek:
 

doctor-don

macrumors 68000
Dec 26, 2008
1,604
336
Georgia USA
That's only a drop in the bucket toward helping the national debt. Long-term capital gains tax isn't going to cost him that much money, even considering the cost basis of the stock.
 

doctor-don

macrumors 68000
Dec 26, 2008
1,604
336
Georgia USA
So Steve Jobs might announce his retirement over the weekend. By opening of trading next week stock's down 20% or more, he'll buy back what he just sold and then some...!

But he has been doing this over a longer period, not all of a sudden.
 

doctor-don

macrumors 68000
Dec 26, 2008
1,604
336
Georgia USA
I'm going to hope this is a ~$350 triggered trade. I considered doing as much (setting a hard price near pre-leave levels at which I'd sell) after the price drop when Jobs went on his current/second leave. If Jobs were to become incapacitated, I can't imagine what would happen to the stock price, deserved or not. Selling now that AAPL's nearly back to pre-Jobsian levels is just smart. Reduces exposure. Puts the bird in the hand, etc.

But this also tells us Mansfield thinks there's no safer time to sell between now and his next option. I understand $350 being "good enough", but when your hardware guy doesn't see a reason to stick around, that's bad news. I mean, he can't help but be doing a little insider trading, right?

This is likely A Bad Thing for AAPL owners, and can be no better than A Neutral Thing, and the latter only if Mansfield isn't real bright, which we know isn't the case. How close we are to the former rather than the latter would seem to be at least partially correlated with Mansfield's business acumen.

AAPL stock dropped in price when it was announced that Jobs was taking time off (meds adjustment?); but it came right back up - along with many other stocks.

How can you say he is insider trading? Does he have some knowledge the rest of us don't have about how Apple stock is performing?
 

Zaqfalcon

macrumors 6502
Mar 22, 2010
361
138
Will somebody please make up a vaguely believable but unsubstantiated rumour about an Apple product, so that I don't have to see this bloke's ugly, rich, fat face on page 2 anymore - thanks.
 
Aug 26, 2008
1,339
1
AAPL stock dropped in price when it was announced that Jobs was taking time off (meds adjustment?); but it came right back up - along with many other stocks.

How can you say he is insider trading? Does he have some knowledge the rest of us don't have about how Apple stock is performing?

It would be insider trading if, for example, he was dumping the stock because he knew of something bad coming down the pipe for Apple.

Lot's of guys cashing out though, Serlet, Mansfield. I mean you have to consider that these are also regular people and making a small fortune is highly desirable to them. I don't think the "fanboy wars" really pertain to high level executives really.
 

blow45

macrumors 68000
Jan 18, 2011
1,576
0
Will somebody please make up a vaguely believable but unsubstantiated rumour about an Apple product, so that I don't have to see this bloke's ugly, rich, fat face on page 2 anymore - thanks.

a tad mean to Bob (who I am hearing is a pretty nice guy) but lol'ed anyway, should read more p. 2 news, all the better posting is here.
 

Tsuchiya

macrumors 68020
Jun 7, 2008
2,310
372
Why did he not sell the remaining 1 percent? I know nothing of economics, sorry.

Surely selling the last 501 shares would be the same as giving up his stake in the company? Thus he will still be an employee but with no rights to dividends etc.

(Disclaimer OK, so I'm new to the trading world, and I've only made a few trades in the past few months to dip my feet in. Therefore I concede that my knowledge is far from perfect and am willing to be humbled.)

So can someone explain how this doesn't get classed as insider trading?

Bob sells the majority of his shares when the price is good (here I assume that he knows that they won't increase much on $350).

He still has stock options giving him dibs (can see I'm being technical here :D) to buy stock in the future using 15% company discount. Therefore when there is a slump, or if the price has dropped a little (or is due to increase a little) he can buy back and make a massive profit (even a few dollars made per share would be epic all things considered).

However, due to his position in the company, it can be argued that he has knowledge of things that investors won't, therefore giving him an edge in the company. Even if he is just basing his trades on the normal fluctuations the market can expect whenever a new product is announced, won't any trades he makes be called into question?

:confused:
 

ZipZap

macrumors 603
Dec 14, 2007
6,075
1,445
If he follows the sec process, he can sell what he wants. I'd say he's smart to take some profits and put them in the bank.
 

BJMRamage

macrumors 68030
Oct 2, 2007
2,710
1,233
holy crapload that is a lot of shares to sell and money to make....and doing that every so often makes him even richer.

wow!!
 

mrxak

macrumors 68000
They all do this, and he'd be crazy not to do this. The smart execs always cash in their stocks as a way of maximizing their income. This is no reason to be alarmed, and as the article says, this is nothing new, and he's also been buying shares when the price is low. $350 is an excellent trigger point for a sale.

I say good for him, he deserves it.
 

Stevesbodyguard

macrumors newbie
Feb 17, 2011
27
0
Normally this would send a stock tanking, but if this guy has been pretty consistently doing this with his options/shares, then it's not really news, and share prices shouldn't be affected by this.

I suspect the article is just highlighting this pattern with Bob Mansfield so that no one gets the wrong idea.

Did you take an entry level finance course or something? Or you work for Goldman Sachs? Pretty sure that Apple has roughly 925 millions shares in the market and he only sold like 38,000. That works out to about .004%, so NO, this would not "send a stock tanking".
 

jaksta

macrumors newbie
Mar 14, 2011
11
0
San Francisco
I had shares in my Silicon Valley employers stock once. I wish I had sold everything when I could have. Would have definitely been the smart thing to do.
 
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