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0 pointsghaff2y ago0 comments

As a random individual, almost certainly. I can do lots of (legal) things to ferret out information that is theoretically public but which isn't actually widely known.

As an insider it's more complicated as I understand it. A company I worked for had a no trade window around earnings reports. The idea is that not only couldn't you trade on advance information but you also couldn't trade before investors had time to price the results into the stock. In other word, you couldn't trade based on the results you knew were coming a microsecond after the results hit the wire. (The HFTs would probably beat you anyway but I digress.)

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fbdab1032y ago

There was a legal case where the speed of light was used to identify insider trading. Information was publicly disclosed at (fake numbers) 12:00:00:001, yet trades benefiting from the information came at 12:00:00:002, which was faster than possible for the information to have been learned and acted upon by the involved parties.

https://www.theverge.com/2013/10/3/4798542/whats-faster-than...

dataflow2y ago

IANAL but I imagine corporate policies are stricter than the law here. I have a hard time imagining people getting prosecuted for "insider trading" based on earnings reports half an hour after they become public, but trading windows still generally prohibit that.

ghaffOP2y ago

You're right. Caesar's wife beyond reproach and all that applies.

Especially these days with computer algorithms, the idea that it might take a couple of days to price in an earnings report is pretty silly probably. (And if an employee knows a lot of dirty laundry behind the public numbers, an extra day or two probably doesn't make much of a difference anyway.)

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