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

1 points by drandall 17y ago ↗ HN

Can individual companies enable this sort of behavior legally? Is this more of a technical or ethical question?

Edit: this sort of behavior: short selling your own stock

3 comments

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i think 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.

olefoo 17y ago ↗

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

drandall 17y 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?