From the above link:
On the third question, whether the news of Harken's unexpectedly large loss hurt the company's investors, the SEC examined Harken's share price just before and just after news of the loss was made public. The announcement came at 9:34 A.M. on August 20, 1990. When the market opened that morning, according to the SEC, Harken's stock was selling at $3 per share. It stayed at that level until after noon, when it began a slow slide to $2.375 per share. The next day, however, it rebounded to $3 per share. If the loss announcement had been a bombshell, SEC investigators reasoned, the stock would most likely have fallen immediately and stayed down. "The conclusion of the Office of Economic Analysis is that, because the price of Harken did not immediately react to the earnings announcement and there is no news that explains Harken's return to its pre-announcement price of $3 on August 21, 1990, the earnings announcement did not provide investors with new material information," the SEC said. Furthermore, even though Harken stock moved down for the rest of 1990, it recovered its value ? and more ? the next year, when it hit $8 a share.
FORM 144 VS. FORM 4
In addition to the questions that have been raised about Bush's decision to sell his stock, there are also questions about when he informed federal regulators of the sale. Last week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, "Oddly, though the law requires prompt disclosure of insider sales, [Bush] neglected to inform the SEC about this transaction until 34 weeks had passed. An internal SEC memorandum concluded that he had broken the law, but no charges were filed. This, everyone insists, had nothing to do with the fact that his father was president."
The documents tell a somewhat different story. Although Krugman did not mention it, Bush was required to file two disclosure forms with the SEC. One, which was known as a Form 4, was due the month after Bush made the sale. The other, known as a Form 144, was due at the time of the sale. Bush filed the Form 4 several months late, but he filed the Form 144 on time. In the view of some experts, the Form 144 was the more important of the two.
Bush filed the Form 144, officially known as a "Notice of Proposed Sale of Securities," on June 22, 1990, the day of the sale. In the form, he listed, among other things, how many shares he intended to sell, when he had originally acquired them, how much they were worth, and which broker would handle the transaction. "The 144 is probably the more market-informative form," says Edward Fleischman, who was an SEC commissioner between 1986 and 1992. "It gives market-watchers an indication of what is coming." In contrast, Fleischman says, "The Form 4 is totally retrospective and was originated for a very different purpose, to keep track of dates and prices." If the purpose of disclosure was to make regulators and investors aware of Bush's insider sale, then the Form 144 was the more important document.
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