31–40 of 130 posts
Would it be so bad if insider trading laws just went away? Information is spreading faster than ever. So a few Mak outsized gains on some inside info. Is it that big a deal?
It really makes me question the sanity of doing this illegal trading. For as much effort you could do something legal and make money. Maybe not as much but surely without the risk of going to prison.
Perhaps someone will change my mind, but I see the block on insider trading and spoofing as harmful to the financial industry overall. Someone starts shorting a ton of Apple stock? That probably means something big is happen at Apple, and it's not good. It's information. Spoofing as a technique can be used to combat and inhibit other types of trading, and is in some sense an algorithm to 'keep the opponent honest'. A…
The tone of this article was really, like, interrupted by a prolific use of "likes." I wish it were so simple to hand-wave all security risks. Mr. Levine's ability to find a MySQL tutorial was quite impressive, but his dismissal of very real security concerns is childish. It's like saying cars are known to crash, so quit crashing cars. It's so, like, simple!
The tone of this article was really, like, interrupted by a prolific use of "likes." I wish it were so simple to hand-wave all security risks. Mr. Levine's ability to find a MySQL tutorial was quite impressive, but his dismissal of very real security concerns is childish. It's like saying cars are known to crash, so quit crashing cars. It's so, like, simple!
I love reading Matt Levine's writing; I enjoy the humorous tone. A bit of Louis CK for the financial world. But I didn't get that he was dismissing the security concerns. I read it as he was dismissing the idea that some aspects of the hacking could have been more easily thwarted. For example, two factor authentication is a relatively straightforward protection. Now he may have been underselling how complex it is to…
It's actually still possible to perform a specific type of legal insider trading. Example: you are an executive at E Corp and the company will announce its acquisition in two months. You had previously set up planned trades to sell x number of shares each month before then. Because the acquisition is at a premium on the current price, you will make much less money if you go forward with your trades before the announc…
Perhaps someone will change my mind, but I see the block on insider trading and spoofing as harmful to the financial industry overall. Someone starts shorting a ton of Apple stock? That probably means something big is happen at Apple, and it's not good. It's information. Spoofing as a technique can be used to combat and inhibit other types of trading, and is in some sense an algorithm to 'keep the opponent honest'. A…
You are absolutely right. "Insider trading" is like the war on drugs.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the tracks - snatched some swisher sweets? That's a shootin. Sass me while black? That's another shootin. You got a likky stik of collie and minoritous in nature? You going down: hard!!!
It's actually still possible to perform a specific type of legal insider trading. Example: you are an executive at E Corp and the company will announce its acquisition in two months. You had previously set up planned trades to sell x number of shares each month before then. Because the acquisition is at a premium on the current price, you will make much less money if you go forward with your trades before the announc…
Politicians in Congress are explicitly allowed to insider trade based on information they hear about. This is why congressmen's stock portfolios are far more profitable than an average person's.
Of course, the answer to that is to require all Congressmen to put their assets in a blind trust.
Perhaps someone will change my mind, but I see the block on insider trading and spoofing as harmful to the financial industry overall. Someone starts shorting a ton of Apple stock? That probably means something big is happen at Apple, and it's not good. It's information. Spoofing as a technique can be used to combat and inhibit other types of trading, and is in some sense an algorithm to 'keep the opponent honest'. A…
I'm pretty radically against copyrights and such but I don't think anyone who wants a stock market can say that a corporation doesn't have the right to put limits on what employees do with information. And the first limit most anyone will put on information their employees are given is "no trading on it" - because the stockholders actually, oh, own the stocks and don't want random people profiting.
So insider trading is just broadly taking stuff you weren't given from work. If you make the situation purely civil, a few companies might even allow this but I don't see as a big selling point for their shares.
For the majority of companies, that wouldn't allow it, if there were no explicit laws against insider trading, profits from it could still be lumped under theft in civil lawsuits.
It's actually still possible to perform a specific type of legal insider trading. Example: you are an executive at E Corp and the company will announce its acquisition in two months. You had previously set up planned trades to sell x number of shares each month before then. Because the acquisition is at a premium on the current price, you will make much less money if you go forward with your trades before the announc…
So a "trade canary", then.
This would then lead to the question: am I an insider trader if I am basing my options off of the lack of sales of insiders?