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That's why I called it a hack. Fundamentally, it's not much different to gambling with an advantage - there were certainly a lot of opportunities for him to lose.

I don't think this called for a suspension of ethics, rather more of a disregard for the establishment.

Look, legally exploiting a flawed system to produce a net benefit for oneself isn't fundamentally evil. In fact, in this situation it seems (fortunately) that his actions eventually bailed out a whole lot of small-time investors.

What about using the other investors to blackmail management and then selling out these investors when management paid him off? When someone is this smart, the responsibility to be good is even more pressing and the condemnation for being bad should be more loud. And yes, I am judging.

You're right, he didn't generate any overall utility. But on the other hand, he didn't create overall disutility (i.e. harm people). So he's in a better moral position that Nathan Myrvold or other patent trolls.

In a way he did make wealth by increasing the market's efficiency no?