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Comment by Natanael_L | Hacker News Reader

But there's also bad incentives tied to it - with inside information, you're incentivized to keep others in the dark so that you can maximize the impact of your trades. Things like borrowing money to short stocks in a company likely to go bankrupt, while telling people to buy.

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> with inside information, you're incentivized to keep others in the dark so that you can maximize the impact of your trades

This is true of all professional trading.

> borrowing money to short stocks in a company likely to go bankrupt, while telling people to buy

This would be fraud, which is illegal independently of any insider trading rules

Why does borrowing money in any way diminish the positive effect of making the stock price more reliable?

And how does the incentive to lie to other traders apply only to insider trading? It seems like that would always apply to all trading.

Like I replied to another comment, should judges be allowed to trade on information about judgements he has yet to deliver?

That sounds like a question for a professional ethics board. I would assume a judge caught doing that would be sacked, disbarred, and publicly shamed, even if everything he did was strictly legal.

"Wrong" doesn't automatically mean "criminal."

I don't think so, but I think that could be handled on the side of the court, not the side of the exchange. It could certainly be illegal, or at least a disbarrable offense, for a judge to use his or her knowledge for personal gain. Likewise, many of the most flagrant examples of insider trading could be covered under trade secret or contract law, like a CEO shorting his or her company then purposefully sabotaging it.

Telling people to buy stock you shorted is a bad idea. You're goal is for the stock to go lower.

> bankrupt

Should deal with that

Yeah but conversely you want to talk the price up before you lock in your short so that you get in at a better price.

> Things like borrowing money to short stocks in a company likely to go bankrupt, while telling people to buy.

It's a dick move, but seems perfectly legal.

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