No if you trade on insider information, whether it's for your clients or for yourself, you will be prosecuted. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-comcast-hldgs-insidertrading-sec-idUSKBN15P2KA This guy was just trading for himself, still got into trouble with SEC. Hope the guy has a good lawyer.
The subject heading in the email cracks me up--"Hello Daniel". I think Daniel is a prince of a small African country.
The notion that trading from info found in the public domain is the illegal type of insider trading is laughable. The guy that got busted in the Dream Works deal obviously had a direct trusted fudiciary connection. Per the SEC, insider trading is legal unless you have a fiduciary role with the company. For example an employee that is an engineer thinks business is picking up, they load up on their company stock. The stock soars the following year. The SEC views this as completely legal insider trading.
Can't you just buy/sell on that information? Who the hell would know? Unless you buy insane amounts of stock it isn't suspicious no?
I need to believe that Jeff Bezos can spell "acquisition" correctly, therefore I call fake on this email screenshot.
It depends on how you define "public domain". NOT all aspects of Internet is considered public domain. If a company has published some highly confidential and sensitive information that if disseminated, would have sizable impact on the market on the Internet but has gone to extensive length to secure it in a way that general public, through ordinary browsing efforts would not uncover it and yet you, by employing extremely complex, complicated, sophisticated means that has gone beyond normal ordinary browsing efforts usually used by a regular person and has uncovered the sensitive insider information and traded on it, you would still be prosecuted for insider trading. As for the Dreams Works case, it was very clear the guy was neither an insider of the company he traded nor trading for someone else but purely for himself based on the insider information in an attempt to make profit and yet he was charged by SEC. I thought this example is very clear you don't need to have a "fiduciary duty" to anyone to be charged for insider trading. Am I missing something here? Looks like this thread starter did not succeed in promoting his penny stock but started something on insider trading. LOL
Anything you find "online" is in the public domain, and is therefore not "insider information." Trade on, McDuff!