Legal Risks of Writing Articles About Stocks for My Investment Blog
My question is about the legal risks of writing articles about stocks for my investment blog ( I am not a registered investment advisor).
I am a full time stock market investor and have been thinking the last year about starting an investment blog or writing articles on www.seekingalpha.com ( or similar sites) about stocks that i have in my portfolio.
I know that there are certain legal risks involved, however I have no idea what these risks are exactly and what the exact guidelines are that I should follow.
A few of my main questions are:
- What kind of disclosure will I need to place in the articles that I will be writing about?
- Is there a certain timeframe in which I will not be allowed to buy or sell the stocks that one article is about, before and/or after publishing an article ?
-Can I get in trouble because of an accidental error in my articles ?
Any advice is really appreciated, also if you have an idea where I would be able to obtain more information
Re: Legal Risks of Writing Articles About Stocks for My Investment Blog
While you could probably paper around risks of error or negligence, what of the legal risks?
I seem to recall a couple of cases where a person wrote blogs and got in legal trouble. In one case the person was blogging about their struggles with diabetes and how he ate to overcome it and a state requiring licensing for dieticians threatened him with jail if he continued. Same with a blogger regarding raising children and there the challenge was he was not a licensed counselor.
I do not know if it would apply in your situation, but you need to look into it before you start. If the licensing people get a bee in their bonnet, it could be expensive to get out from under their thumb.