[munk-a]

Market manipulation is not a victimless crime. Money does not condense in the stock market from thin air, all of the realized funds are coming from a place and going to a place...

Confidence is a big factor, whenever someone manipulates the market they're shaving a few thousandths of a cent off of everyone's funds in stock exchanges by lowering the general public confidence in the stock exchange - and if that ever dips low enough all our futures could evaporate.

Realized gains is another big factor, the stock market is large and nebulous and terrible to try and understand, but money goes in whenever money comes out - when your stock goes from 10$ to 11$, good for you, have a party... but you haven't realized those gains yet - when you actually sell your stock there is a buyer buying them from you, often times you'll sell to a mutual or index fund which constantly allow market liquidity, when you do so your benefit is coming out of someone else's pocket. The idea is that the other person has made an informed decision with all the information available to both of you to take a certain level of risk - when you add in insider trading the information available becomes unequal and you are selling them a risk of quantity x and they're expecting to buy quantity y, where x > y, these damages end up (generally) being pretty wide spread, but they slightly lower the margins on your mutual fund return or index fund or what-have you.

Criminals love to minimize the impact of their crimes so don't buy into it here you wouldn't believe that a burgler that broke into your house to steal a broken TV should only be liable for the lock (or even that he saved you money in the disposal fee).

There are real consequences for insider trading and they are serious ones.