[Sungirl]

ALL:

Why are the Dems saying that the Enrons employees were not allowed to sell their stock..that only the top officials were? Aren't there windows where employees are allowed to buy and sell several times a year? The stock has been falling since Mid february 2000...so the employees were not allowed to see since then??

[SW6906]

I think they were only allowed to move stocks around in their 401(k)'s quarterly, so when it really started diving, they could do nothing but watch.

BTW: from what I understand, the company dictates this, not the FedGov. The company I work for used to work like this, then they changed their system and now I can move funds daily.

[VRWC For Truth]

The company I used to work for matched all my 401K contributions in company stock and I used to re-distribute my 401K ONCE A YEAR so I had no more than 4% of the total in company stock. I could trade more often but the key was balancing the 401K portfolio. I always made my contibutions to the other funds, and let the matching funds build up in company stock. If the company stock holdings got too big, when I realigned once a year, I would dump the excess into the other funds. This is investing 101. People tend to get greedy with their 401K's given the recent run up in the markets but it's for retirement. You have to be less agressive and more long term. Though I have sympathy for those who lost money, the one to blame is staring at them right in the mirror. These employees were all gung ho when the price of the stock was skyrocketing.

[Sueann]

Enron began in Feb of 2001 searching for a new administrator for their 401k. They waited until October to make the change (a little tooooo convenient for me); during this change-over period, the funds are frozen until the new administrator takes over. The timing was perfect - it gave the top guys time to get their money and run and left the employees with nothing - and no way to get out because the funds were frozen.