I remember a few commentors on HN recently saying they have made large gains by buying stock of companies after the news of cyber security breaches significantly reduced the share value, then waiting for the dust to settle(reaction-news-cycle to complete) and the price to rise again.
For the benefit of those reading: given that this may very well be the worst breach ever by far, and is likely to attract significant attention from government regulators and prosecutors, this is likely a particularly unwise time to begin attempting this strategy.
The direct financial impact to Equifax is likely to be tiny, and their customers aren't the people who's personal information they just left on the side of the road. Once the news cycle is past, it will be business as usual at Equifax.
I might do this with options for this breach, depending on what the IV is tomorrow. While this is probably the worst breach ever, it also happened in a time when there's a government that is going to do fuck all about it.
So what's it going to look like 6 months from now? Your guess is as good as mine. Mine is: either absolutely nothing happens and the stock goes back up, or this finally gets something to be done about the garbage that is SSNs and/or credit reports (in which case I can't really imagine what happens to the stock price in any direction).
The sad thing is these breaches are so common place nowadays most of us regular folk just assume all our personal information is compromised to some degree. I'll be curious to see if this breach has any real material business impact.
If it is, wouldn't the best course of action to sell as soon as the news is announced? You then avoid the insider trading accusations (as the information is now public), but still avoid the bulk of the losses.
No, because the information is not considered public until it has been widely disseminate for some amount of time. As I recall, 2 business days, but it may not be strongly defined.
