Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…We need to talk about how Ken Lay was selling. Ken Lay was so over-leveraged. He had received advice from his money manager saying, you really should diversify. All of your wealth is tied up in Enron stock. It's all you've had since 1986 when it's really run. What he does—it's so confusing because he's savvy; I don't know why he does this—instead of diversifying, he claims he's diversifying, but what he's actually doing is doubling down. Instead of selling his Enron stock, he starts taking margin loans against his Enron stock and using that to invest in other things. Now, Enron stock starts collapsing. He starts getting margin called. He's then needing to sell Enron stock in order to service the debt that he used to invest in these other projects. This is my own speculation. This is not alluded to in, and certainly not in Conspiracy of Fools, but when I took a step back and looked at what was going on here, Lay is not a bozo. He may have been out to lunch, but he knew what was going on here for sure. He was probably just as evil as any of them.…

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