Am I now an 'informed source' for some flipping broker?

Factual Questions
1

Look, normally I do everything with my brokerage account online. But I needed to transfer some funds in from another brokerage account, which meant I had to call somebody up to get the numbers to fill in for wire service instructions.

In addition to telling me that, he managed to ask me about where the funds were coming from, and on finding out they were from cash that’s been sitting for some time in the account that holds my corporate stock option plan, managed to pump me about the company I work for and what I think of the future of it’s stock, yada-yada (a big well known company trading on the NASDAQ, BTW).

I would hate to think that these guys are handing out reccomendations to purchase something on the basis of conversations with some random rank-and-file employee of the company who happened to call up for some routine account service.

2

If you had any truly important information that wasn’t know to the general public, that broker (and possibly you) could be in serious trouble. That’s insider information and should not be used by a stockbroker (the SEC would not allow it).

Now general information about how you like working there, etc. doesn’t come under this, but if you told him, for instance, that the company president is leaving but wants to delay the announcement for two weeks, that could get you into a lot of trouble.

Analysts get their information from a variety of sources, and an employee is OK so long as you don’t give him information that is material to the stock price that no one outside the company is supposed to know.