Public-company execs who want to sell stock or exercise stock options can reduce the chances of being sued for insider trading by using a Rule 10b5-1 stock trading plan, which is sort of a programmed-trading arrangement. The theory is that if you've programmed your trades well in advance, you're less likely to be using inside information when your trades actually happen. An article in the January-February issue of the ABA's Business Law Today, however, says that the SEC is giving increased scrutiny to these plans, because there are cases in which executives have made programmed stock trades whose timing, in retrospect, appears to have been suspiciously good. The question is whether these execs have traded outside their plans.