A former finance executive at a tech company allegedly traded with inside information about the company’s revenue and earnings performance, U.S. authorities charge — profiting much more from a miss than from the company beating forecasts.
In a criminal indictment filed in the U.S. district court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), Jesse Mitchell, a former senior director at The Trade Desk, was charged with two counts of securities fraud, amid allegations that he traded ahead of the release of the company’s earnings, while he had inside knowledge of those results.
The indictment alleged that, in 2024, Mitchell — who worked on the company’s financial planning and analysis team — had access to confidential financial information before it was publicly disclosed, and traded on that information.
By trading ahead of the company’s announcement that it beat revenue expectations in the second quarter of 2024, Mitchell allegedly made an illicit profit of almost US$20,000, the indictment alleged.
Then, in early 2025, before the company announced that it had missed revenue expectations for the fourth quarter — the first time that it missed quarterly revenue expectations since the company went public — Mitchell allegedly made almost US$320,000 by trading put options to bet against the company’s stock. The stock dropped around 30% after the miss was announced.
In a parallel proceeding, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that Mitchell violated securities rules too.
The SEC’s complaint, also filed in the SDNY, seeks permanent injunctions, disgorgement, civil penalties and an officer-and-director ban.
The allegations have not been proven, and he is presumed to be innocent of the criminal charges.