The recent Kodak situation (where a huge options bonus was given to their CEO the day before announcing a major government loan) goes to show how little some executives are worried about insider trading prosecution.

I've been working on a dashboard to track insider transactions at S&P 500 companies, you can check it out at https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/insidertrading

My guess is that insider trading practices are simply getting smarter. e.g. receive a hot insider tip? In the old days they'd just buy up a bunch of that stock. Nowadays, there are systems that can trigger diversified purchases across multiple asset classes & markets that end up reaping just as much profit (if not more), while obfuscating the financial ties.

Insider trading is one of those crimes where it is a bit ambiguous as to what the crime is (at least to me). Information travels with some speed and there will always be people with access to better information making better decisions.

We have much better technology these days. Rather than making trading some sort of crime we should just have a "relevant persons" standard where CEOs and anyone who has close contact with them have to register what they are about to do a few days before they make any trades of shares in the company.

It is fundamentally a bit silly have a situation where it is illegal for someone to make best decision given their knowledge. We can safely guess that the professional traders are leveraging every possible edge, fair or not, SEC regulation or not if they think they can get away with it.

This is another example of the US backsliding on what it has historically claimed as its competitive advantage: efficient markets, a lack of corruption, and rule of law.

For the people out there claiming that this development is an exclusively Republican project, I offer [1] as a counterexample. In the market right now there are widespread practices that would have been prosecuted a decade ago.

“Alternative data” is a euphemism for “insider trading, but on a computer”. It’s the alpha capture [2] of today.

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/hr2534

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/09/blackrock-agrees-with-ny-att...

My first thought was that this couldn't possibly be hedge funds reaping the gains of a Republican government because the hedge business is doing pretty miserably. How could their funds be collapsing and still be insider traders?

But thinking about it further, there is still a category of hedge funds at the absolute top like Lone Pine, Viking, and D1 that are doing exceptionally well. D1 is newer but the others continue to defy the odds year after year while their peers collapse.

And I could probably name 20 funds in total like that. So maybe fewer funds are participating but they are doing it better?

Brian Krzanich (former CEO of Intel) sold all of the stock he could as soon as Google informed Intel about spectre and meltdown.

It's hard not to think that insider trading won't be punished when even the most obvious cases fly by with hardly a mention.

Although Hanlon's Razor advises considering incompetence[1] before ascribing malice[2], there's always this advice from 1944:

(p.29) 11.b.10: "To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work."

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23389921

[2] https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/...

    We play croquet
    And go rollerblading
    Here's to homies on lock
    For insider trading

My view on this is Insider trading is rampant. Trying to squash it, while a good endeavor, is like trying to eradicate cockroaches. There's always more... The most egregious cases will probably still get prosecuted and this still serves as a deterrent, but there will be a few more people walking free.

Note that the enforcement of a lot of regulations and rights _in general_ have been under-enforced under Trump. This Patriot Act episode is an entertaining take on a topic that is very little comical[1].

[1] https://youtu.be/uKXIvfQnYEY

I have some insider information I can offer. DM me.

Update: I should delete this because it doesn't offer anything useful to the discussion.

Capitalists and their politicians have been into "defund the police" long before it was cool. Though only their police such as the SEC, IRS, FTC, EPA, etc.

Good, the insider trading laws should be abolished.

Insider trading is a victimless “crime” where I believe the penalties are immoral. Simply not https://reason.com/2014/06/17/insider-trading-is-really-comm...

Insider trading is more or less dead. The only people who do it are a very small overlap of the Venn diagram of people who have access to material nonpubluc information and don’t yet know it’s impossible to monetize it. Every hedge fund knows where the line is and they never cross it. I know NPR wants to imply this is because the GOP is soft on crimes like this, but it’s probably more due to these crimes no longer happening.