Finance

One of the biggest believers in gold is prospecting for outside investors after seeing the value of his personal holdings slashed in the metal’s steep fall. Read the full story here.

How we collected and analyzed the data behind our recent coverage of troubled stockbrokers. Read the full story here.

Investors made outsize bets on Allergan Inc. stock in the 10 days during which activist hedge-fund manager William Ackman was privately accumulating a stake in the Botox maker, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Read the full story here.

Securities regulators are expected to unveil plans to step up checks on stockbrokers’ records, including requiring brokerage firms for the first time to do formal background checks on new employees. Read the full story here.

More than 51,500 stockbrokers failed a basic exam needed to sell securities at least once and those who repeatedly failed have on average worse disciplinary records. Read the full story here.

For a new breed of “activist” investors, tipping other investors is part of the playbook. Read the full story here.

A major Wall Street regulator “routinely deletes” red flags on stockbrokers, said a study released Thursday. The study follows a Wall Street Journal analysis that found more than 1,600 stockbrokers have bankruptcies or criminal charges in their past that weren’t reported to regulators. Read the full story here.

More than 1,600 stockbrokers have bankruptcies or criminal charges in their past that weren’t reported to regulators, leaving investors in the dark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. Read the full story here.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is highlighting a fast-track program it began earlier this year to go after what it calls “high-risk brokers.” Read the full story here.

When corporate executives give favorable stock guidance, sell their own shares, then disclose bad news, investors sometimes grow suspicious. Read the full story here.

The Wall Street Journal series on executive trading began with a casual conversation between one of the reporters and a long-time source. Read the full story here.

Study Shows Brokers’ Requests to Strike Complaints Granted in Vast Majority of Cases Read the full story here.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said it will consider requiring brokerage firms to carry insurance to cover the payment of arbitration awards to investors. Read the full story here.

More than 5,000 brokers were still licensed to sell securities earlier this year after working for one or more firms that regulators expelled between 2005 and 2012, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal. Read the full story here.

Up to 11% of certified financial planners who work at big firms call themselves ‘fee only’ when, by definition, they can’t be. Read the full story here.

Short sellers are facing their worst losses in at least a decade, a Wall Street Journal analysis has found. Read the full story here.

U.S. companies are beginning to change the way they police trades by executives and other insiders in their company stock. U.S. companies are revising trading rules for executives, with some introducing longer “cooling-off periods” before trades can occur after establishing preset trading plans. The changes come after a series of Wall Street Journal articles highlighting profitable, well-timed trades by company insiders. Read the full story here.

A Wall Street Journal review of thousands of trades by insiders in their own company’s stock found the trades veering heavily toward selling rather than buying as bankruptcy filings drew nearer. We found that corporate insiders often shift from buying to selling their company’s stock as bankruptcy approaches. Our analysis suggests insiders might be privy to their company’s deteriorating conditions ahead of other investors. In the last three months before bankruptcy filings, insider stock buys dropped over 80%, while sales only slightly decreased....

Stock “pinning” is the tendency of stocks to close precisely at their nearest option strike price and is a regular feature of expiration Fridays. A Wall Street Journal examination of trading behavior from the start of 2007 through April 2013, using a list of all U.S. stocks with options from DeltaNeutral.com, gives a sense of the phenomenon’s prevalence. We analyzed trading behaviors from 2007 to April 2013 using U.S. stocks with options data....

Prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into whether corporate directors misused government-sanctioned trading plans to sell company shares for investment funds they run. Federal prosecutors are investigating potential misuse of 10b5-1 plans by corporate directors, allowing them to sell company shares even when privy to nonpublic information about their firms. The probe was triggered by a Wall Street Journal article detailing trading activities at several companiues. Read the full story here.

Corporate board members are increasingly using a type of opaque trading plan that was originally intended primarily for executives. The use of government-sanctioned 10b5-1 trading plans, designed to avoid insider trading suspicion by scheduling trades in advance, has surged by 55% among nonexecutive directors since 2008. Some directors use these plans for rapid large-scale stock sales. Critics argue that these trading plans may sometimes be abused, especially by board members who also run investment funds, potentially leading to the appearance of impropriety....

Regulators will step up their focus on trading by corporate executives this year, according to a large international law firm that is pressing corporate boards to increase oversight of executive-trading plans. Regulators will increase scrutiny on trading by corporate executives, pushing corporate boards to enhance oversight of executive-trading plans and ensure compliance beyond just the letter of the law. Concerns arise from loopholes in 10b5-1 plans, which allow executives to trade company shares even with private company knowledge, given the plans were established without such knowledge; there’s currently minimal oversight and public disclosure requirements for these plans....

A medical-supplies company made a $43 million repurchase of its own shares last year, buoying the stock before bad news hit, even as four top managers were selling company shares. A medical-supplies firm repurchased a significant amount of its own shares, boosting the stock’s value, while four top executives sold their company shares. A month later, the stock experienced a 9% drop following the announcement of poor earnings. Some employees within the firm expressed concerns about the trading activities....

The SEC is facing mounting pressure to tighten its rules, following a Wall Street Journal investigation that found profitable and well-timed trades by more than 1,400 executives. In 2007, a senior securities regulator cautioned about the potential misuse of preset plans by executives to trade their companies’ stock based on inside information. Following a Wall Street Journal investigation revealing well-timed trades by over 1,400 executives, pressure has mounted on the SEC to tighten its rules....

Ten Big Lots Inc. executives sold a total of more than $23 million in the discount retailer’s stock in March before the company announced news that sank its stock, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Read the full story here.

Federal prosecutors and securities regulators are taking a deeper look into how executives use prearranged trading plans to buy and sell shares of their company stock. Read the full story here.

Some investors are calling for better disclosure of stock transactions by corporate executives amid concern that some may be trading based on private information about their companies. Read the full story here.

An investigation of insider trading by corporate executives found many make profitable trades prior to news announcements. Our analysis found that many executives made trades yielding considerable profits just before significant company news announcements. Of 20,237 executives we looked at, 1,418 experienced an average gain of 10% in their trades one week before significant news releases. This rate of profit was notably higher than that of executives who faced negative stock movements....

An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that banks’ submissions used to calculate the London interbank offered rate often are slow to change and sometimes fail to track the market’s view of the credit risk posed by each firm. We found that banks’ submissions used to determine the London interbank offered rate (Libor) frequently remain static and often don’t align with the market’s perception of each firm’s credit risk, leading to questions about Libor’s credibility....

The Galleon Group hedge fund wasn’t alone in piling into Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock hours before the bank announced a $5 billion investment from Warren Buffett’s firm at the height of the financial crisis, trading records show. Read the full story here.

Smaller U.S. banks and savings institutions are cutting jobs in a sign of a deepening financial-industry retrenchment that is shaking firms from Main Street to Wall Street. Read the full story here.

When disgraced hedge-fund titan Raj Rajaratnam is sentenced in federal court Thursday, he will come up against a hard and unavoidable truth: Inside traders are facing considerably harsher sentences than they did in the past. Read the full story here.