ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

ImClone stock trading case

Okay kiddo, let me explain the ImClone stock trading case to you in a way that's easy to understand.

ImClone is a company that makes drugs for cancer patients. Sometimes companies like ImClone sell shares of themselves to the public, and people can buy those shares to own a small piece of the company.

Now, there was a man named Sam Waksal who was the CEO of ImClone. He knew that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was about to reject ImClone's new cancer drug. When a drug gets approved, the company's stock usually goes up because the drug could make the company more money. But when a drug gets rejected, the company's stock usually goes down because shareholders are afraid the company won't make as much money.

Sam Waksal knew that when the FDA announced the news that the cancer drug wouldn't be approved, ImClone's stock would drop. So what did he do? He warned some of his friends and family members that the bad news was coming. Because they knew this ahead of time, they sold their shares of ImClone before the news was made public. This saved them a lot of money because they sold their shares before the price dropped.

This is called insider trading, and it's illegal. Sam Waksal and some of his friends and family were caught, and they were punished for breaking the law.

So, in summary, the ImClone stock trading case was about the CEO of ImClone warning his friends and family members that the stock was about to drop, which was illegal because they sold their shares before the news was made public.