News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators. Parent comment

Re:Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators by albntomat0 on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @09:51PM (#23411444)
If you trust Wikipedia, this is the first sentence in the US section on insider trading: "Until the 21st century and the European Union's market abuse laws, the United States was the leading country in prohibiting insider trading made on the basis of material non-public information."[0]

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I work in finance, but I think the key is what exactly constitutes "non-public information." I can trade on all the public information regarding Tesla's cars, like reviews, published production numbers, and Elon's tweets and my own analysis of all tat but not on the word of a someone who works there saying they've got some big unexpected news.

There's a bunch of interesting cases about whats on the edge, for example, commercial satellite imagery to count cars in parking lots[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#United_States_...

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/05/stock-v...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators by derivativethrow on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @09:59PM (#23411485)
No, material and nonpublic is necessary but insufficient for the trading to be illegal. It must also break a confidentiality agreement, fiduciary duty or specific law pertaining to the way the information is released to the person and their duties thereof.

This is to say that it's illegal for congresspeople to trade on material, nonpublic information because there is now a law explicitly governing it. If they (or anyone) develop the material, nonpublic information through original research, it's not illegal.

Don't trust Wikipedia summaries for these things.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators by albntomat0 on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @10:00PM (#23411495)
Do you have a good source to recommend with a more detailed overview?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Show HN: Stock Performance of US Senators by derivativethrow on Wednesday June 03, 2020 @10:02PM (#23411509)
Read the SEC documentation on insider trading directly. Barring that, Matt Levine gives accessible (and entertaining) which is informative for a lay audience.
[ Parent | on HN ]