> People who do it are just complete idiots.
Exactly this. Especially in the 21st century world of big data, ML algorithms and all that jazz.
The closer you are to the action, the higher the chances of getting caught.
If you work for a finance firm, its pretty much guaranteed you'll be caught. Firms are hot on it and they take all sorts of layered measures to prevent it and stamp it out. If you work for a finance firm, in most cases its actually harder to obtain the insider information in the first place than it is to act on it as a PA trade. One of the most well funded and well-staffed departments in any finance firm is the compliance department and they have the power to kill your career instantly (you'll get escorted from the office the moment they suspect anything, forced to stay at home on gardening leave whilst they investigate and then once that's over - and assuming it doesn't go legal - you'll find nobody in finance will employ someone who was sacked for compliance reasons).
If you work for a listed company, then like these guys eventually found out, you'll be caught. A bit of data mining at the SEC will soon weed out transactions made by people who likely knew what was going on before the public did.
All this hard work on compliance makes the stockmarket one of the most even playing fields there is for investors, because the work of the SEC and other regulators around the world is there to ensure John Doe has the same chances as Warren Buffet to make money on the stockmarket. (Yes, the world of HFT is a bit different with their technological edge, but that's another story).
Exactly this. Especially in the 21st century world of big data, ML algorithms and all that jazz.
The closer you are to the action, the higher the chances of getting caught.
If you work for a finance firm, its pretty much guaranteed you'll be caught. Firms are hot on it and they take all sorts of layered measures to prevent it and stamp it out. If you work for a finance firm, in most cases its actually harder to obtain the insider information in the first place than it is to act on it as a PA trade. One of the most well funded and well-staffed departments in any finance firm is the compliance department and they have the power to kill your career instantly (you'll get escorted from the office the moment they suspect anything, forced to stay at home on gardening leave whilst they investigate and then once that's over - and assuming it doesn't go legal - you'll find nobody in finance will employ someone who was sacked for compliance reasons).
If you work for a listed company, then like these guys eventually found out, you'll be caught. A bit of data mining at the SEC will soon weed out transactions made by people who likely knew what was going on before the public did.
All this hard work on compliance makes the stockmarket one of the most even playing fields there is for investors, because the work of the SEC and other regulators around the world is there to ensure John Doe has the same chances as Warren Buffet to make money on the stockmarket. (Yes, the world of HFT is a bit different with their technological edge, but that's another story).