Violating bank policy by not disclosing brokerage account and short selling

External question — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: Ava Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/146771 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. I live in U.S and work as a software developer (back office) at an investment bank. I don't have those series 63 license that needed to be registered with Finra, and my work is nothing at all related to investment or trading. Several months ago, I opened up a brokerage account in Jan and had been trading (both buying and short selling) big name company like apple, tesla. there was absolutely nothing illegal in those trades. I was just using moving average to determine if price is too high or low. Two days ago I found out that my bank has a policy not allowing employees to short sell and all employees needed pre-approval for trading. Since then I did not trade at all. I am so scared that my company will find out. Should I just quit my job so HR will close my profile so that they will never try to find out? I mean if they really find out then I may get fired and never be able to work in the same industry again.

External answer — Personal Finance Stack Exchange Author: JohnFx Original post: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/146782 License: CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ Adaptation: HTML converted to plain text; contact email addresses removed. You should talk to the compliance people at your job and get advice on how to handle it. This stuff happens all the time, no one is perfect. They will have a procedure for making it right. DO NOT try to cover this up in any way. As with most things people get crucified for lying more than the actual thing they did in the first place. By trying to hide it you turn an innocent mistake into an intentional act of deception.