[paulsutter]

You're muddying the waters here, the original poster is correct, but with a few scenarios for outsiders. For example, a company that printed the financial statements of companies, had no NDAs, was trading on the data, and was convicted of insider trading because they knew the data was company confidential information.

Theft from the company is the central tenet, whether you are an insider, have a fiduciary responsibility, or an outsider who comes across data from inside the company.

Material nonpublic information that isn't taken from the company is fair game, thus all the quant funds that collect detailed market intelligence and trade on it (or the posted example, a passenger on the plane who knew the news ahead of the public). It doesnt matter one whit whether the information was material or public, it matters only that it wasn't taken from Boeing

EDIT: I was involved in the early days of a company that sold data to quant funds, and spent many hours with lawyers on exactly this question

[HWR_14]

> or an outsider who comes across data from inside the company

Doesn't it matter how you came across that data? If you were at a coffee shop and happened to overhear a bunch of Boeing engineers talking about how they were replacing bolts with hot melt glue I thought you could you trade on that. If they explicitly told you that they were replacing the bolts with hot melt glue, then you wouldn't be able to.

[pama]

Unless you shad signed an NDA that stated they would not disclose non-public info and then told you about the glue, in which case you could still trade on it.

[colinmorelli]

It does seem quite odd to say "it doesn't matter one whit whether the information was material or public" when insider trading is defined as: the trading of a company’s securities by individuals with access to confidential or material non-public information about the company.

Further, I struggle to understand how one could learn information which is non-public without "theft" of that information. It would seem that, by definition, if the organization begins sharing that information with individuals who have no confidentiality obligation, they have now made that information public.

What does tend to happen often is that others assume "public" means "written in the news" and that is certainly not the case. There are plenty of things that are knowable by the public but not obvious, and it's perfectly fine to trade on that.

[sokoloff]

You’re missing a clause in what constitutes illegal insider trading. From an SEC site: https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba... (italics added by me)

> Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, on the basis of material, nonpublic information about the security.

[colinmorelli]

My statement was copied from Cornell Law's definition [1].

But, yes, all of these shorthand definitions are designed for the general public's consumption, and skip over specific nuances - including the SEC's definition. The sentence read above would seem to permit a person with a fiduciary duty to share information with someone who does not have one, and for that person to trade based on the information. However, we know this is not permitted.

In any case, I think my comment still stands. I specifically called out in my parenthetical in the original comment that the information would need to be knowable only by those with a fiduciary or confidentiality obligation to the company. This seems to cover your comment and sibling's concern.

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/insider_trading

[paulsutter]

You're thinking too narrowly.

Example: logs of search queries that suddenly trend with adverse information about companies. Those logs are not public, in fact you need to buy them, but they have real signal (thus material and nonpublic), and are perfectly legal to buy and use. Satellite photos to estimate material stacking up outside a factory, or how many cars are in the parking lots of retail stores. Mobile data that has been statistically tied to foot traffic in stores. Credit card purchase data (not public! very material! perfectly ok!) I could go on forever

Go ask a lawyer this is a big space

EDIT: Yes exactly, ITS HAS TO BE CONFIDENTIAL TO THE COMPANY AND THUS TAKEN FROM THE COMPANY LIKE I SAID ABOVE. Your explanation implicated all the cases I described. You haven't seen how explicitly rich are the sources that I mentioned above, they are very very definitely information about the companies that are traded

[colinmorelli]

My explanation did not implicate the cases you described above, because it explicitly said "only available to those with a fiduciary responsibility or confidentiality obligation to the company"

Regardless of the level of fidelity, if you got that information from an unaffiliated third party entity who captured it in the delivery of their own services, it is not "only available to those with a fiduciary responsibility or confidentiality obligation to the company"

It sounds like we are saying the same thing and you don't feel my original comment was clear enough. That's fine feedback. But there's no substantive disagreement. The points you listed above are all fine to trade on.