Raj Rajaratnam

Charrie Grace M. Pablo

11131268

Raj Rajaratnam was involved in the said to be largest insider-trading case faced by the SEC last 2009. Raj’s illegal trading had been rampant for more than a year already in Wall Street before he was finally arrested. He had been talking to some executives of different corporations to seek information that he could use to get money in the market. One of which was Roomy Khan of Intel Corp which was caught in her message saying “Don't buy Polycom's stock "till I get guidance; want to make sure guidance OK”. With this happening, authorities started to investigate Raj and found out other insider tips he was getting at that time. Raj’s supply of information came from different people like Daniel Chiesi and Anil Kumar of McKinsey and Co. These people helped Raj to earn millions of dollars by means of supplying information not known in the market and thus, Raj would be able to trade stocks accurately and gain profits vastly.

As the title of the documentary says, “American Greed”, one of the internal factors that lead Raj to do this illegal act was his greed. He’s becoming richer and richer every year and even made it to the top richest people in America. With greed overpowering him, I think he was never satisfied on what he has. Hence, he continuously does this illegal act. Also, his capability and opportunity were part of the internal factors that made him do this. As an analyst and hedge fund manager, he knows what to do with the non-public information he’s getting from the executives. Together with the capability is his opportunity to do this as a person part of the Wall Street that time. His opportunity enabled him to trade illegally after obtaining the information ahead of anyone.

On top of these internal factors, there were external factors that allowed Raj to do insider trading. First, he had a lot of connections to each of the corporations he’s trading to. I think that being famous in that industry lead inside traders to...