vg_future .. They do need to sell them at sometime (no can question that) but if they can be timed more properly. Again, proper timing could be only an individual's perspective...but waiting till the wallstreet gains confidence would have been better.
No reason to ignore your post .. that is a perfectly valid question. We come back to the competitive question again in terms of compensation. I was granted a significant amount of options when I was on WS. They came with lots of restrictions in terms of when I could sell them, some having to do with insider trading regulations and some having to do with vesting rights associated with employee retention objectives. That is why we used to call them "in lieu ofs" as in "in lieu of good old US legal tender spendable upon receipt and not subject to market fluctuations beyond my control." I remember when I was first made an officer of the firm and my closest friend said to me, "They didn't make you take more stock did they?"
I can assure you those restrictions were not viewed as positives. However, they were viewed as neutrals versus what we could get at some other firm .. everyone on WS had basically the same restrictions. However, if I had had an additional restriction that I had to get management approval before I sold to make sure that the "timing" was right I would have definitely considered those to be of less value than the ones my friends down the street were getting.
Regards,
Danny