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Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement::Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night’s hugely controversial announcement it …
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Sounds like insider trading to me
The stock is down 5.5% today. It’s down 6% from a week ago.
The stock is up 0.5% from a month ago, and up a whopping 32% from 6 months ago.
It’s down 50% from five years ago.
What I’m getting at is that this announcement has very little movement on the stock price overall. Unless these bosses were clearing out their inventory thinking this news would kill the company, its possible these sales were normal transactions.
The financial impact of this decision is entirely speculative at this stage. Unity’s next quarterly earnings report won’t be impacted by it. The market is attempting to price in losses that haven’t yet occurred. We won’t know how it affects stock price for awhile
Yeah, an announcement like this is the shit wall street lives for. Short term gain but a long term harm is what they’re all about. That’s why they love layoffs as well. Doesn’t matter that it screws with company morale, short term the company makes more profit!
The small nosedive the stock price took agrees with your assessment. It’ll get an emotional reaction from some, but decisions like this are made in the interest of the shareholder, not the consumer - this is a calculated move to generate profit. They decided that the losses of people abandoning the product will be outweighed by the profits of this new revenue steam.
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So it’s only kind of insider trader because it’s only 5%?
He may have committed some…light insider trading
Edit: inb4 people don’t get the joke
It’s not insider trading because this decision will make the stock price climb in the long term, and any sales would need to be significant to be worth the penalties.
Stock was $39, dropped to $36. $3 difference x 2000 shares sold is a difference of $6000, something considered a rounding error when talking about the sums of money these people have.
This sounds like someone was selling their stocks and buying their kids a house by making small sales to have minimal impacts on stock price, not insider trading.
In reality the people that know their intentions are the ones that pressed the “SELL” button
So it’s only insider trading if they get it right? But not just kind of right, like, really right.
If they legit sold their stock because they believed they would lose the value of their asset in the timeframe they were planning on owning it because of their company’s policy change, then yes absolutely they should be held accountable.
My argument is that this isn’t insider trading, but rather the movement of money for other, legitimate, purposes. I’m not saying it looks good, but it may just be coincidental bad timing that someone wanted to, for instance, pay for a year of their daughter’s tuition, or buy their son a home as a wedding present.
A clearer example of insider trading is a politician’s husband buying and selling shares of companies prior to public announcements of major government policies, coincidentally the companies directly impacted by those policies which their spouse was involved in enacting.
Doesn’t matter if you win or lose, insider trading (illegal kind) is when someone with access to material non-public information, trades based on that info. I believe all publicly traded companies must have policies in place, so that any employees with access to this type of info have trading restrictions. In general, if they want to sell, they need to inform an internal compliance team, and then there may be mandatory waiting periods. For example, they may only be able to sell after 30 day waiting period.
Just finished taking Econ 101, didja?
Yeah no, that’s not how it works.
“Normal transaction” after a fundamental change in how all games that use your product are financially responsible by novel, unmeasurable, and unrealistic metrics. No transaction prior to this kind of announcement is “normal” imo.
Why would executives sell shares of their own company in any case?
I could imagine selling a handful of shares to finance a big purchase like a house, but otherwise they shouldn’t ever be cashing out while they’re in charge. If they think they’re serving the company, they should be holding onto their shares.
The flaw is the notion that they serve the company. This is a parasitic class which serves itself above all else.
All trading by corporate officers is, by definition, “insider trading”.
But as long as they did it at the appropriate times (usually windows after earnings calls iirc) and file with the SEC it’s fine.
We’re gonna tank the company for money, everyone in this room sell all your stock over the next x months.
X months pass and the last sale of stock happens legally
Time for that announcement, send it.
Thanks - now that I’ve slept on it I believe the “after earnings call” applies to other non-officers of the company. I remember having some options that I could only exercise during certain times (HR would send us emails when those windows opened/closed).
Nope, just a scheduled sale of a minute portion of his held shares which he receives as part of his compensation and a minuscule amount of shares outstanding. He’s sold over 50k shares this year, this is just a normal thing.
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Trade windows are often for 30 or so days after earnings reports. Unity’s Q2 shareholder letter was Aug 2nd this year. Could very well just be the usual trading window.
CEOs and CFOs on occasion have protections against insider trading stuff.
Got a source on that?
Note the key takeaways section hence it’s not always a breach of insider trading if the CEO/CFO does it. it really depends. It’s a dumb escape mechanism people in power have.
If you’re ever worried that these corporate assholes are never punished for their blatant shady behavior, don’t worry. They have to deal with raised eyebrows which we all know can be super embarrassing.
I dunno, if a government cares enough to look into this then the corpos might get some VERY sharp slaps on their wrists.
Sounds illegal to me.
unfortunately there is a massive loophole that allows them to do this. what they do is set up sell orders at regular intervals (once a month or whatever) for months or years in advance. then when they decide they dont want to sell, they just cancel the order which is totally fine for them to do for some reason. if they do want to sell they just let the order execute and if anyone asks, they set it up a year ago and there is no possibility that the current decision could have influenced them into making that sell order a year ago.
I guess it would be best to change the rules so that they cannot trade their company stocks at all while working there and a reasonable period beyond. I think some legislations already restrict floating stock like that but I’m no expert on the matter.
That would make stocks a form of retirement, not a work compensation.
How about that you can sell the stocks, with an uncancellable order a year in advance?
Good point.
I guess just having a staggered temporal restriction is fine, don’t need to wait until you retire necessarily. You would still receive a portion of your salary package in the form of classic currency and plenty for a good life too. An example could look like this and I’m obviously making up the percentages and durations here, they would need to be fine tuned:
- 40% of salary as cash
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 6 months
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 12 months
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 18 months
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 24 months
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 30 months
- 10% of salary as stocks that can’t be sold within 36 months
When the homies fix corporate compensation by inventing RSUs 😎💰
Installed Godot yesterday and it’s starting to grow on me, I like it. Looking forward to a huge movement of studios over to Godot, which will hopefully speed up the development of Godot through further support. Is there any reliable source of data about which game engines are popular at the moment? I want to see that sweet sweet decline in Unity user base over to Godot.
I found steamdb.info. According to them Godot seems to be growing steadily.
I really love Godot, it’s great. I actually switched to it before I even knew what open source was simply because it’s way nicer to use.
What types of games do you develop? I just started gamedev as a hobbyist earlier this year, so I’m by no means an expert in the field. I’m not into 2D games, I very much prefer 3D. What scares me is that I don’t see that many well made 3D games in Godot out there. It’s mostly 2D. Nonetheless, the engine seems to be capable of doing about the same of what Unity offers. I hope I’ll be able to soon reach the same level of proficiency in Godot and support the growth of 3D community.
Now I am confused what a game engine even does? I thought it was a type of rendering software, shouldn’t all of them do 3D?
There is a lot more to a game engine than just graphics, although that’s an important piece of the puzzle.
Input, sound, physics, networking, collision detection, path finding, scripting…etc are all important parts that are handled by the engine.
Godot 4 has brought a lot of improvements to 3D, it’s definitely a good engine for 3D games now. I also prefer 3D btw.
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Amazing, we need more competition on the market. It’s never good to let big corporations run a monopoly.
How’s that even legal.
Usually people at a company are not allowed to sell stock except during special windows. For people at the very top it’s restricted even further where they need to essentially plan to buy/sell stock well in advance. Essentially there is a huge delay to any stock decisions. So these sell offs were likely decided far in advance and once locked in cannot be changed.
For more details read https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule-10b5-1.asp
the sale might not have been shady if scheduled, but the timing of the announcement which they have complete control over IS shady as fuck.
So basically it can be “legit” if they schedule the sale for a year out and the announcement for a year and a day…
You can regulate the stock market as much as you want but it’s a flawed concept.
Ex EA CEO btw fyi
Makes absolute sense!
He’s literally the micro transactions guy. He’s cancer.
It’ll be my ignorance, but how are you allowed to own stock in the company you’re on the C-level of? Wouldn’t your direct control of the company, and the ability to buy and sell stock, be seen as insider trading?
Many company boards (of which CEOs sit at) have requirements where they must vest a minimum dollar amount into acquiring company shares. The purpose of this is to ensure they have an interest in the success of the stock and thereby the success of the company.
These same companies will then additionally have blackout periods typically 30 days before the announcement of quarterly earnings where employees are restricted from selling shares.
Not sure what unity’s board rules are but if they are a public company it should be in their investors materials, annual reports, etc
Hard to see selling stock, as an executive, as confidence inspiring.
All execs sell their own stock all the time. You’re just aware of it today for one company so it seems like an issue.
Riccitiello has 3 million shares. He sold 2k (.06%) recently and 50k (1.5%) YTD.
You should also be made aware that when you are identified as a director of a company, trades like this are generally automatically scheduled due to MNPI regulations.
https://www.gurufocus.com/stock/U/insider
Tim Apple sells about a million shares of AAPL every year, while holding roughly 3M continuously. Likely all pre-planned on a schedule.
It’s common for executives compensation to be partly in stock or stock options, so it’s not uncommon for them to execute and sell.
If they own shares, then they want the company to succeed. A better question is “why are they allowed to sell those shares until they quit?” And the answer to that question is that everyone with enough power to change this also enjoys the current system.
Get fucked, use Godot
So they knew damn good and well the announcement was gonna cause the stock price to drop?
