Good point - this was information leakage that, even if you had traded on it - would not be insider trading.
Stocks always seemed like legal gambling to me. If you can't predict it and you can't use any edge that others don't know about, then doing anything but using index funds is gambling, or am I missing something?
> Also insurance companies are basically bookies.
Hehe yes, it also occurred to me that being in a car accident is basically winning the insurance lottery that car owners pay into.
Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_theory_(investments). So you can get an edge by sourcing information from various places and piecing it together better than anyone else... that's fine as well.
> If you pickup a dollar bill on the ground, could you be accused of theft? Probably not...
Depends on the country - in some countries, yes, that is actually considered theft.
The only questions you have to ask yourself are: - is the information material? (would an average investor learning of it impact the stock price or valuation) - is the information non-public?
If the answer to both of the above is yes, you are insider trading, whether you heard about it from a friend, family member, or overheard someone in a bar. It's not only unethical to trade on such info, it's illegal.