Since the boys//girls in Congress do better than hedge fund managers and beat the market handily - I'd say there's some self-enrichment benefit in cheating....
Its obvious somebody really high up... say a German President or someone who lost of lot of money when these funds were shorting companies into destruction... wants cohen out of business or in jail. Should he just not take his billions and close down. Surely he can get his buddies at goldman and the fed to broker an exit strategy. Steve as your ET internet lawyer... its time get out. Your people are getting picked off one by one. They will roll. That is how the Federal govt rolls. This should be a movie. He is warned... stopped shorting my companies. He says fuck you- you don't have that kind of power.. Goldmans money is in my fund. We own the Fed you idiot. We own the govt. The official vows to take him down He says fuck you. He seems to be losing.
the US is one crazy country where people, sometime, go to jail for insider trading for a longer period than murder. in reality it is just a tax on the rich. there is plenty economic justification to legalize insider trading. banning insider trading is an easy sell to the clueless public.
my theory was that there were more trends in the market when insider trading was allowed. I also agree that you should either allow it... or really shut it down harsh. Right now everybody seems to get away with it, except for a few select times. This its illegal but everyone gets away with it is not good for the markets. That is why I think someone powerful is really pissed at SAC.
Zr1Trader: while I agree that it's hard to define insider trading, I've been on the other side on insiders and had significant losses because of them (with GMCR) - therefore I'm quite pleased that at least something is being done. Equities are more sensitive to this since the news based moves are more common and generally quite dramatic.
Uh, no, they don't get away with it! The issue is fairness and the damaging effects of the inefficiency of imperfect information some investors may have versus others. This is illegal as it is completely unfair. Mere knowledge isn't illegal, but the issue is if you pretend you don't know or do know something is material, non-public information of course you should not trade on it. It's just ethics. This dilutes the value of prices and until they are allowed to move the reason for the way it is now is because it is unethical to make money off information that is obviously going to produce profitable illegal trades. Seriously, do you believe the Japanese have better markets? Or allow fairness? They don't and I doubt inside info trading rules will ever be legal and if the congressional crackdown on inside information trading isn't more than obvious that trading on inside information legally will never happen in the United States it probably won't ever happen then....at least for a very long time...
ah, yes they do get away with it... all the time. just go back an look at the trades made around the time of the 2008 bank bailouts. guys were making moves after fed hearings and bailout plans. You think the Sec is going to come down on the big companies or the wall street banks. Guys like Larry Ellison dump shares while going CNBC and lying about their expected numbers.
"Guys like Larry Ellison dump shares while going CNBC and lying about their expected numbers. " your scenario is doubtful. my guess is that ellison's sales are automatic. at the moment he is on tv that is the best guess if the sales trend continues. sometimes sales in the one or two weeks prior to end of the quarter change drastically resulting in the upending of earnings forecasts.
It was a few years ago when I traded full time. around 2000. My dad was long 5000 shares... I watched ellison lie and then about a week later he said oops. In the mean time he dumped and incredible amount of shares. I looked through the reports of his share trades and I saw no pattern prior to that. You are correct it could have been a planned trade. But I am telling you he lied his ass off on cnbc. All this competitors were tanking an he got on to prop his price up. So even if there is a remote chance he had planned the sale long in advance... there is no doubt in my mind he lied his ass off to prop up the price for his sale. Mark Cuban... http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/mark-cuban-insider-trading-case-12/ Happens all the time. http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/how-insiders-use-private-information-and-don’t-get-caught-70/