All insider trading should be legal. Imagine the opposite case. You know your company is doing poorly but the government forces you to not sell your stock and take a loss.
If I am willing to give out information gained during employment of the company to anyone asking as part of their research, then by this definition it's not illegal, as anyone can get the information with some research.
https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-ba...
Because while they may not prosecute often, I'd still rather stay off their radar.
Then why were these engineers being charged? They used a role which very likely was open to anyone in the public to apply to do research into the performance of the company.
If you do research and deduce nonpublic (secret) data and use that, that is fine. The classic example is inferring sales data from customer traffic by observing the parking lot utilization at regular intervals.
Other jurisdictions have different presumptions about what insider trading laws are for and may thus interpret them in different ways.
This was a US jurisdiction filing so the former standard applies but on an international message board it’s worth remembering people have different intuitions about this stuff for good reason.
No insider trading should not be legal
The only victim "insider holding" could have would be people betting against a trend caused by public information (who would win even more if the "insider holder" would sell with the herd), either out of pure gambling desire or because their trades are insider trades. Neither seems particularly worthy of protection.
>This can also lead to highly warranted investigations, given that actual abuse is incredibly common.
Or possibly not. It could drive anyone who suspects a professional may attribute (correctly or not) some circumstance as abuse, to merely completely avoid letting their family see any professionals. These laws degrade trust even further between professionals and those seeking them, reducing access to care. Instead of an aid, a therapist or doctor is seen as a threat so dangerous as to risk breaking apart your family at any time. Avoidance at seeking professional services may decrease warranted investigations rather than increase them.
Anyone familiar with substance abuse patient care understands how mandatory reporting frequently endangers children: many drug-addicted women birth outside the hospital system so they can keep their children (mandatory reporter laws encourage them to avoid safer birth environment).
But of course I don't doubt compelling people to say their thoughts out loud to authorities could lead to more 'warranted investigations' at a dystopic cost. As with many laws written so _someone will think of the children_, there is some factual basis that additional warranted investigations may be opened as a result of creating these thought crimes. I am of the opinion, though, that criminalizing these thoughts leads more towards "involuntarily report anything that may risk my license, at the cost of traumatizing innocent families" rather than "voluntarily report genuine abuse."
However, there's an even more interesting wrinkle. In that case, you plan trades well in advance, and then cancel them based on insider information. In one case, that was rules to not be insider trading either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1
"After Rule 10b5-1 was enacted, the SEC staff publicly took the position that canceling a planned trade made under the safe harbor does not constitute insider trading, even if the person was aware of the inside information when canceling the trade. The SEC stated that, despite the fact that 10b5-1(c) requires trades to be irrevocable, there can be no liability for insider trading under Rule 10b-5 without an actual securities transaction, based on the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S. 723 (1975).[6]"
I imagine the way this works out for non-idiot inside traders, is that their cousin or close friend holds the stock instead. Insider trading is really only discoverable when performed by the stupid or complacent.
However I agree with the principle that it easy to do if you have any level of intelligence (and no i am not giving way how I would do it ;) )
I dont know the full solution, but it is clear by just looking at US Congress that more work needs to be done on solving insider trading