The insider trading you're allowed to do

(coached.com)

38 points | by rohanm93 3 hours ago

11 comments

  • fai5a1 2 minutes ago
    This is information asymmetry. The nokia engineers knew something that the rest of the world didn't and were able to use it to their advantage.

    In any transaction if you know less than the other party, you're at a disadvantage. I was just thinking this morning I could've negotiated a much higher comp for my current job if I knew just some of things about the company I know now.

  • yawaramin 57 minutes ago
    Actually, the real legal insider trading is the trades that you _don’t_ place based on insider knowledge. Eg, if you know that the iPhone is years ahead of everything else and you happen to be holding Apple stock, then you won’t let whoever is managing your portfolio sell any of it when otherwise you may not have cared. There’s no way to prove illegality for _not_ placing a trade.
    • dumberquestions 49 minutes ago
      There should be a name for this cognitive bias, not accounting for what someone is not doing.
  • harporoeder 38 minutes ago
    There are explicit insider trading forms such as SEC forms 3, 4, and 5. Insiders are allowed to trade as long as it is declared to the government. The issue is with trading while having material non public information. Frequently trades are executed on an explicit schedule with rule 10b5-1 to act as a defense against accusations of trading on MNPI.
  • elil17 11 minutes ago
    How many people think this way, jump ship, and end up being wrong?
  • sixtyj 1 hour ago
    This is not an “insider trading”, it is an insider’s knowledge (affinity to knowledge) and ability to use it.
  • haunter 13 minutes ago
  • bananaflag 1 hour ago
    Also see the famous case of

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Mustaine

    who left Metallica to found Megadeth.

    • pipes 59 minutes ago
      Genuine question, what inside info did he have?

      Also

      "Initial drummer Carruthers was replaced after Mustaine and Ellefson decided they could not trust him. Carruthers had chosen to hide his black heritage from them by claiming he was Spanish, and they could not understand why he would deceive them.Brett Frederickson joined the band in November 1983 as their next drummer."

      That move probably hasn't aged well. Pretty nasty.

      Edit: I can't recall which podcast I heard this, but ismtbhebthe guy that was sad that his band didn't sell as many records as Metallica?

      • stavros 3 minutes ago
        I don't understand what happened, he hid the fact that he was black from them, they couldn't understand why he'd hide it, and they fired him? Isn't this kind of exactly why he'd hide it from them?
    • elvircrn 1 hour ago
      Completely unrelated to the article claims.
  • toppa33 46 minutes ago
    Good article. I feel this way about my job :/
  • cucumber3732842 17 minutes ago
    On the flip side, even if the company is on the way up and you're on some team that's at the center of it and you'll never benefit from it if your manager doesn't like you. All the opportunity to do all the things that lead toward career growth and compensation will go to other people.
  • yieldcrv 51 minutes ago
    I read the article and I’m far more interested in talking about actual legal insider trading in the equities market

    You may not be able to trade your company’s stock, or a competitor’s if you have knowledge that was under an employer agreement, but you can trade your sector and correlated assets

    You can have an edge, it’s not a legal issue.

    • graemep 27 minutes ago
      I assume you mean things like trade secrets that you cannot disclose? That is legal because it is not information that is confidential the same way as say financial results are. It is confidential, but for different reasons. It also tends to be much more long term information so people cannot make a quick profit from it. Its also impractical to regulate.
  • Havoc 54 minutes ago
    Unfortunately doesn't work that smoothly everywhere because outcomes are often tied to larger unknowns whether it is will AI bubble pop or will the global economy take a dip.

    Access to internal data isn't a crystal ball