Personal Trading Performance of Financial Intermediaries

Do employees of financial intermediaries such as brokers, financial analysts and fund managers take advantage of their access to private information? In their March 2018 paper entitled “Personal Trading by Brokers, Analysts, and Fund Managers”, Henk Berkman, Paul Koch and Joakim Westerholm examine the personal trading of employees at Finnish financial intermediaries (experts) who have regular access to material private information. In Finland, regulations require that these experts disclose personal trades in any stock listed on the Nasdaq OMX Helsinki Exchange. Using  personal trading data for 1,249 experts at 40 Finnish financial intermediaries representing 90% of the Finnish fund management industry and 99% of the Finnish brokerage industry, plus aggregated trading data of Finnish retail investors, during August 2006 through August 2011, they find that: (more…)