61–70 of 227 posts
Matt Levine covered this well too: https://archive.is/Kd6Os The answer being no, because as a consumer you have no duty of confidentiality.
It’s an advantage only a few people have, and you paid something in order to be put in that position.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're muddying the waters here, the original poster is correct, but with a few scenarios for outsiders. For example, a company that printed the financial statements of companies, had no NDAs, was trading on the data, and was convicted of insider trading because they knew the data was company confidential information. Theft from the company is the central tenet, whether you are an insider, have a fiduciary responsibi…
It does seem quite odd to say "it doesn't matter one whit whether the information was material or public" when insider trading is defined as: the trading of a company’s securities by individuals with access to confidential or material non-public information about the company. Further, I struggle to understand how one could learn information which is non-public without "theft" of that information. It would seem that,…
Example: logs of search queries that suddenly trend with adverse information about companies. Those logs are not public, in fact you need to buy them, but they have real signal (thus material and nonpublic), and are perfectly legal to buy and use. Satellite photos to estimate material stacking up outside a factory, or how many cars are in the parking lots of retail stores. Mobile data that has been statistically tied to foot traffic in stores. Credit card purchase data (not public! very material! perfectly ok!) I could go on forever
Go ask a lawyer this is a big space
EDIT: Yes exactly, ITS HAS TO BE CONFIDENTIAL TO THE COMPANY AND THUS TAKEN FROM THE COMPANY LIKE I SAID ABOVE. Your explanation implicated all the cases I described. You haven't seen how explicitly rich are the sources that I mentioned above, they are very very definitely information about the companies that are traded
Is it insider trading if you sold Microsoft stock short because Windows gave you a BSOD? Clearly not. The question is only raised because airplane failures are much more rare than software failures.
Well, if I found an unpatchable zero-click RCE exploit on an iPhone, then that would have a major effect on the stockprice when the news is announced. It definitely seems like it would be insider trading if i used that knowledge to do options trading.
If you independently discovered it, any other member of the public could have discovered it (assuming they had the skills and time).
Someone is going to write a trading bot that scans worldwide ADSB data, looking for sudden, unexplained altitude changes - Identify the airline and equipment type and short them both. Assuming this doesn't exist already.
IANAL, but I don't see how. If you're just an ordinary person, you're trading based on an event you witnessed in the course of going about your life. No different I would think than if you witnessed a plane crash. You might be investigated though if the amounts were large enough. It gets much more complicated I would think if you were an air traffic controller or otherwise learned about it in a professional capacity.
I think it's mostly a joke, the original post is from Reddit r/WallStreetBets. But regarding Air Traffic controllers, it appears they are barred from owning airline stock https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/5/6001.104 (b)
It’s a big ask though. Where do you draw the line?
So either that, or I can get Pelosi ETF.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does seem quite odd to say "it doesn't matter one whit whether the information was material or public" when insider trading is defined as: the trading of a company’s securities by individuals with access to confidential or material non-public information about the company. Further, I struggle to understand how one could learn information which is non-public without "theft" of that information. It would seem that,…
You're thinking too narrowly. Example: logs of search queries that suddenly trend with adverse information about companies. Those logs are not public, in fact you need to buy them, but they have real signal (thus material and nonpublic), and are perfectly legal to buy and use. Satellite photos to estimate material stacking up outside a factory, or how many cars are in the parking lots of retail stores. Mobile data th…
I'm slightly disappointed that the question was only hypothetical.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're muddying the waters here, the original poster is correct, but with a few scenarios for outsiders. For example, a company that printed the financial statements of companies, had no NDAs, was trading on the data, and was convicted of insider trading because they knew the data was company confidential information. Theft from the company is the central tenet, whether you are an insider, have a fiduciary responsibi…
It does seem quite odd to say "it doesn't matter one whit whether the information was material or public" when insider trading is defined as: the trading of a company’s securities by individuals with access to confidential or material non-public information about the company. Further, I struggle to understand how one could learn information which is non-public without "theft" of that information. It would seem that,…
> Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, on the basis of material, nonpublic information about the security.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does seem quite odd to say "it doesn't matter one whit whether the information was material or public" when insider trading is defined as: the trading of a company’s securities by individuals with access to confidential or material non-public information about the company. Further, I struggle to understand how one could learn information which is non-public without "theft" of that information. It would seem that,…
You're thinking too narrowly. Example: logs of search queries that suddenly trend with adverse information about companies. Those logs are not public, in fact you need to buy them, but they have real signal (thus material and nonpublic), and are perfectly legal to buy and use. Satellite photos to estimate material stacking up outside a factory, or how many cars are in the parking lots of retail stores. Mobile data th…
Regardless of the level of fidelity, if you got that information from an unaffiliated third party entity who captured it in the delivery of their own services, it is not "only available to those with a fiduciary responsibility or confidentiality obligation to the company"
It sounds like we are saying the same thing and you don't feel my original comment was clear enough. That's fine feedback. But there's no substantive disagreement. The points you listed above are all fine to trade on.