Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by foxhill 952 days ago
yes, as opposed to the stock market; if i go buy AAPL calls, i can’t expect to manipulate apple’s share price by, say, buying a bunch of iphones.

conversely, i can’t buy puts, hoping that my stock sell off will effect them being in the money at expiry.

something something market forces and what not, but the long and short of it (no pun intended) is that.. if it were profitable, people would be doing it.

insider trading is illegal for numerous reasons, “abuse of trust” isn’t wrong, it’s just wholly incomplete.

1 comments

>yes, as opposed to the stock market; if i go buy AAPL calls, i can’t expect to manipulate apple’s share price by, say, buying a bunch of iphones.

Did you miss my entire paragraph on activist investors? The only difference between them and you is that they're putting way more effort into it.

>insider trading is illegal for numerous reasons, “abuse of trust” isn’t wrong, it’s just wholly incomplete.

That's the canonical reason, at least in us securities law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#United_States_...