$70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
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Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently read someone's comment here stating that "trust is efficient." What we are witnessing is the devolution of the USA from a high-trust to low-trust business environment. "Low-trust business environment" is the euphemism we have used to describe other countries, where corruption is rampant. This is so sad to watch.
Roots of which started way back earlier than 2001 even..
This was like giving a crack addict a feedback loop which gives them more crack. Of course it was going to end badly.
We could discuss many possible points of inflection, but I don't want to dilute the undeniable power of the phrase "trust is efficient."
However we got here, whatever one's politics, you cannot argue against that simple phrase, and the tragedy of the loss.
___
just to give credit, it was https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=the_snooze who turned me on to these three words that have stuck in my head
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could make insider trading legal by law, but that would destroy a lot of the stock market because all non-insiders would basically set themselves up to be ripped off.
No, it wouldn't destroy the stock market. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43661926 for an explanation. Summary: people are already allowed to trade on inside information (in the US), if the person who officially owns the information is ok with that. The prohibition on insider trading in the US is about fiduciary duty to the owner of the information, not about protecting the general public.
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently read someone's comment here stating that "trust is efficient." What we are witnessing is the devolution of the USA from a high-trust to low-trust business environment. "Low-trust business environment" is the euphemism we have used to describe other countries, where corruption is rampant. This is so sad to watch.
Not just sad to watch . Would a country with a low-trust business environment be allowed to have such a huge mountain of government debt, and continue to have its currency be the world's reserve currency? A lot of sadness hinges on those considerations.
I think most voters think like me “I still prefer Trump to a leftist government”:
- Was there any need to be so extreme in terms of wokeness on the left? I am directly threatened by their program. Was there really any need to go for such a degree of revolution, ensuring everyone sensical would vote Trump? Could the left imagine being a little more democratic and making a few more concessions towards… omg, white males? Is it such a bane? It’s concessions for white males, or we vote for Trump, so did the left win anything with their scorched earth policy?
- It is true that savings needed to be done. The left refused to do any, and went to raise the public programs, reaching a few trillion debt per semester. At one point this has to stop, and the left ain’t gonna stop by itself, so the left provokes the people into voting for the only one who will stop public spending and, yes, he comes in, and has the bad role of taking the US to the cleaners. You will say “It doesn’t even save money” and whatsnot, but would the left have saved the money by themselves? No. Never. So someone else came in and saved for them.
This entire movement is a reactionary movement to the left. The left makes no concessions. So both sides go for a scorched earth policy.
What have we learned? What have we won, on either sides?
Do we agree that, staying closed-minded as they are, the left will resume public spendings by the trillions the moment they step into power? Do we agree that the left is a direct threat to meritocracy, stability of government, men in marriage, men at work, a direct threat to men’s financial stability, and that no-one on the left cares even a little what others-than-them feel?
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just sad to watch . Would a country with a low-trust business environment be allowed to have such a huge mountain of government debt, and continue to have its currency be the world's reserve currency? A lot of sadness hinges on those considerations.
Those particular aspects are only good for Americans though. That those two things are ending is good for basically everybody else, from Brazilians, Chinese and Canadians to Frenchmen.
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Notice that from the point of view of the anonymous counter party trading with you on the stock exchange, both situations look exactly the same. [...] So making insider trading legal in the US wouldn't make the general public any worse off. Eh? If nothing else, doesn't it magnify the public's risk beyond whatever impact Buffet could have on his own? How can you possibly claim there is no difference? You might as we…
> Eh? If nothing else, doesn't it magnify the public's risk beyond whatever impact Buffet could have on his own? How can you possibly claim there is no difference? Let me be more explicit: Warren Buffett usually doesn't physically execute his own trades. So the only difference between the two scenarios I outlined is that in the second one Warren Buffett tells you (as his employee) to trade. In the first one, you trad…
>> If nothing else, doesn't it magnify the public's risk beyond whatever impact Buffet could have on his own?
I am saying that when you let others pull the same trick in addition to Buffet himself, they can now bring their own additional funds to play with -- meaning they can make more trades and cause even more damage than Buffet could inflict on his own. This clearly enlarges the blast radius and allows more harm to the public than Buffet could cause with his own funds. It is ludicrous to close your eyes and suggest the situation is no different, just like it is by suggesting that there's no difference between one country having nukes vs. N of them having them.
Heck, the fact that Warren Buffet is used as the example here instead of some random John Doe makes it clear how intentionally ridiculous the example is: for this to even pass the laugh test and obscure the reality of the situation, you have to pick one of richest people of all time, so that even aggregating a thousand other random strangers' funds together would still miss his purchasing power by multiple orders of magnitude.
Why don't you start with someone poor instead of Buffet, then add Buffet to the equation, then try to claim that bringing the billionaire into the equation makes no difference, rather than the other way around?
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
The military repeatedly drills into trainees that they serve to defend and uphold the constitution , not the presidential orders. There are all kinds of lessons on when to disobey direct orders, when to speak up, how to speak up, what your protections are, etc. etc.
That's what they tell them, yes. Do their actions align with their words?
It's when the orders come in to directly use military force to support unconstitutional acts that we find out, not simply when the military fails to intervene in legal disputes.
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Notice that from the point of view of the anonymous counter party trading with you on the stock exchange, both situations look exactly the same. [...] So making insider trading legal in the US wouldn't make the general public any worse off. Eh? If nothing else, doesn't it magnify the public's risk beyond whatever impact Buffet could have on his own? How can you possibly claim there is no difference? You might as we…
> Eh? If nothing else, doesn't it magnify the public's risk beyond whatever impact Buffet could have on his own? How can you possibly claim there is no difference? Let me be more explicit: Warren Buffett usually doesn't physically execute his own trades. So the only difference between the two scenarios I outlined is that in the second one Warren Buffett tells you (as his employee) to trade. In the first one, you trad…
Re: $70M in 60 Seconds: How Insider Info Helped Someone 28x Their Money
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Family members are often indicated in insider information tradesm they are still trading on insider information when if they are not part of the decision making process themselves. Both leaker and utiliser are responsible. In the case of Pelosi, she became so famous about this that there are various Nancy Pelosi stock trackers now.
Let’s be real: Pelosi became famous for it because right-leaning groups were looking for yet another thing to put on her and then it was picked up by WSB and became a meme. Pelosi’s rate of return isn’t the highest (in 2024, it was 10th, less than half the highest). If you analyze their trades, very few are suspect of timing. They just make a bunch of long term bets on tech. https://www.fool.com/research/congressiona…
But what about the ones that very obviously are? Why did they sell a lot of Visa stocks?
"On Tuesday, less than three months after the massive transaction, Visa was hit with a DOJ lawsuit alleging that the company illegally monopolized the debit card market."
Selling whenever a company gets into regulatory trouble means you avoid all the big downs but still get from all the long term ups. Its a very simple strategy as you say, but its still insider trading even though the ups are mostly the long term gains.