SEC Charges Index Manager and Friend With Insider Trading

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Yinghang “James” Yang, a senior index manager at a globally recognized index provider, and his friend Yuanbiao Chen, a manager at a sushi restaurant, with perpetrating an insider-trading scheme that generated more than $900,000 in illegal profits. The SEC’s complaint alleges that between June and October of 2019, Yang and Chen repeatedly purchased call or put options of publicly traded companies hours before public announcements that those companies would be added to or removed from a popular stock market index that Yang helped his employer manage. When the options increased in value after the announcements, Yang and Chen allegedly liquidated their options positions for a substantial profit.