In the weeks and months leading up to the stock market crash hundreds of CEOs resigned. Fortune magazine described it as the “great CEO exodus of 2020”. CEOs sold of billions of dollars of stock in their own companies just before the share prices sky dived.

At the end of last year a record number of  1,480 CEOs left their posts. This would not be unusual during a recession, but almost unheard of during a time of financial prosperity. And although their were signs that the global economy was slowing, few would have forecast a global recession.

Furthermore in January this year an additional 219 CEOs stepped down. The Wall Street Journal commented:

Top executives at U.S.-traded companies sold a total of roughly $9.2 billion in shares of their own companies between the start of February and the end of last week, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.

The selling saved the executives—including many in the financial industry—potential losses totaling $1.9 billion, according to the analysis, as the S&P 500 stock index plunged about 30% from its peak on Feb. 19 through the close of trading March 20.

However it was not only CEOs selling off stocks. Some members of Congress were also selling stocks just before the market went nuts…

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and three of her Senate colleagues reported selling off stocks worth millions of dollars in the days before the coronavirus outbreak crashed the market, according to reports.

The data is listed on a U.S. Senate website containing financial disclosures from Senate members.

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