Sounds like insider trading to me. The backorders your company has are material non-public information.
It might be a violation of your company’s policy, but unless your company has been given explicit access to material non-public info of nvidia (e.g. you work for their accounting firm), there is no SEC risk here.
I don't know that the specific information collected in this qualifies as material information but it seems like it might.
All of the cases where people have been busted (e.g. the capital one credit card transactions) are because the SEC has an exact quote from the employee agreement that says something like “don’t use this mega database to do trading”.
If your employee agreement doesn’t have something explicitly barring you from noticing racks of incoming inventory and using that information, then it’s not insider trading.
Should the SEC come after someone then, if they stood outside major retail outlets across a city, surveyed buyers, and made profitable buying schemes that way?
How about analyzing satellite images of warehouse shipments? (which is a thing that is being done today)
Not everyone has access to either of those things, yet as far as I am aware, the SEC does not consider that illegal.
Why would aggregating credit card transactions be any different, honestly? Capital One already uses that information to direct its own business, much the same way.
I wish this SEC would have made it clear why this was a problem.
I think most employers wouldn't care at all.
The actual policy wording:
> No Third-Party Trading or Tipping. Do not trade in the securities of another company when aware of material nonpublic information about that company in connection with your work at ******. This includes trading in the stock of ****** suppliers, manufacturers, vendors, or customers, such as cellular network carriers or other channel partners. You must also not tip material nonpublic information about another company.