Housing Wire is fanatical about transparency – it’s why we exist, and it’s a commitment that extends not only to what we report and write on each day, but even to the professionals doing the reporting and writing. Many companies in the mortgage finance industry are publicly traded, and we think it’s important that you know where we’re coming from when we break a news story. That’s why we’ve taken the unique step of developing a company-wide disclosure policy that guides our communications, reporting and analysis. We think it’s the most stringent in the mortgage banking industry, quite frankly.

We dare you to try finding a similar policy at any other trade media outlet in the mortgage finance industry. (You’ll be looking for some time, trust us.)

Disclosure
Whenever a writer covers a publicly-traded company that he or she owns or otherwise has a position in – even options – that fact is disclosed at the end of the story.

Outside columnists, including industry-submitted works, will cite any relevant positions as well; this means if the story mentions a publicly-traded company other than the one s/he represents, any positions in that company must be disclosed.

We’re industry participants, in every sense of the word.
Many financial reporting companies forbid their staff from actively trading in the stock market; we think doing so is just plain mean, to put it bluntly. At Housing Wire, we permit our writers to actively invest in common stock, for two very clear reasons:

We’re big believers in wealth generation, and we think the mortgage banking industry – and, by extension, real estate — is one of the greatest long-term drivers of wealth in the global economy. We believe wholeheartedly that our staff of writers and editors, whose livelihoods are so closely intertwined with the industry that they’ve committed their professional lives to cover, should be able to participate in building wealth via the industry they know best. We don’t think it would be right to close off such an important aspect of investment and wealth-building.

We also think of our writers as industry participants in every sense of the word; and we encourage them to participate in the industry as such. We see our staff as more than mere journalists; HW readers expect to read informed opinions and commentary that makes today’s news mean something. That sort of intuition is often best developed by having the freedom to act as part of the industry being covered.

Trading restrictions
That being said, we do place some restrictions on the trading activity of our staff; we think it’s important to be fair to our readership, after all, especially if we’re about to break a story that will have a significant impact on a company’s share price (good or bad).

The restrictions require:

Must hold any stock position for at least 30 days; this includes option positions, which must be purchased with a settlement date at least 30 days in advance.

Cannot trade based on knowledge they may have about stories that have yet to be published.