The taxpayer, who was employed part-time by a public resource company providing office administration and shareholder relations services, acquired shares on a private placement and on the subsequent exercise of warrants and employee stock options, and then sold his shares in numerous transactions over the following five years.
In finding that the taxpayer's transactions were on capital account rather than adventures in the nature of trade, Miller J. indicated that the taxpayer's activities were more those of an investor regularly cashing in an investment as a need for funding arose rather than an adventure in the nature of trade, and that there was no evidence that what little knowledge the taxpayer had about the business of the company in any way contributed to success in the financial markets or that the taxpayer spent any time studying the markets to determine when to sell.