Yep, I experienced the pain of being locked out for 6 months once... the annoying thing for a lot of people in the group is that it was all because a part of the group was working on a merger but the majority of us weren't involved and didn't even know it was going on.. we just got caught in the mess to insure there was no perception of insider trading.I agree. I’m currently in that position at my job. I have blackout windows between the end of a quarter and quarterly earnings call and filing of the 10-K or 10-Q. I couldn’t sell shares if I wanted to as the stock plan administer locks me out. Once the Q/K is filed I’m free to sell again. They will also periodically lock down sales if work is underway on a major acquisition or asset sale. That’s usually specific to whoever is working on the due diligence for that M&A activity. If you get unlucky and the process takes 6 months or longer there could be large windows blacked out.
In this case I think the date was specifically set for that reason. November 9 was the filing deadline for 9/30/20 10Qs set by the SEC. Pfizer almost always files earlier than that but since the sale plan was filed back in August they likely set the date to ensure the 10Q would be out before the sale.
There has been a push to prohibit officers in a company from selling shares of the company stock while they still work there. They would have to wait until they were no longer employed but the company to sell. The thought being that you avoid any perception of inappropriate sales and also invent the execs to continue to want to see the stock price rise. There’s also some thought that this would push them to think more long term as opposed to making decisions that impact short term stock prices. It’s an idea out there but it has no traction right now.
As for his trades being date specific, I have a real problem with that being kosher. If the CEO knows he has already set a trade to happen on a particular date but has the ability to decide when an announcement on a vaccine is made then he isn't really being kept honest by the pre-planned traded. And now that another vaccine that doesn't require extremely cold storage has popped up that has shown better protection the CEO will look like he made an even better trade as Pfizer is probably going to continue to slide downwards.