Brian Alvey: BusinessWeek for criminals

I was told two rules about editors when I joined BusinessWeek:

If any of them actually knew what they were doing, they would be millionaires from playing the stock market.
By the time something reaches the cover of BusinessWeek, it has already peaked and it's on the way down.

Of course, both of those rules were relayed to me by grumpy editorial technology team members who spent their days and nights helping editors figure out why their XyWrite files wouldn't print.

I was thinking about those rules when I read a story about the SEC nailing a group of insider traders. Some of them had used their roles in the printing plant to read BusinessWeek's "Inside Wall Street" column as it was being printed and pass on information to family members to make money buying and selling stocks.

Wow, I hadn't thought about the Inside Wall Street column for years, but I remember back when I worked at Business Week that only a handful of people were allowed access to the contents until after Wednesday night when the issue was closed. When I first heard about those restrictions, I was told that it was overkill.

But these insider traders made close to $7 million with their scheme, so I guess these BusinessWeek editors know something valuable after all!

Comments (2)

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Brian Breslin 884 days ago

Brian,
That 2nd rule is true of anything in mass media. I had an economics professor a few years back at Virginia (his name was Elzinga - http://www.people.virginia.edu/~kge8z/) that said the best advice is that once something hits the papers, it has ALREADY been reflected in the market. I.e. those in the know have already played their hand, and its those who will be making less profitable moves that will react to that.
Tuggle 879 days ago

That's why I'll never be a great stock market navigator. I keep my news easy, just sit back and wait for the key stories to float to the top.

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