Two Republican Senators are facing calls to resign over using insider knowledge to sell stocks

[Hanafuda]

This is pretty low behavior, but proving it to be criminal behavior is a tall bar. Already mentioned above, but it's not like the virus wasn't already known, and people weren't already panicking. As for calls by offended people on the internet for any of them to resign, don't hold your breath. This is politics we're talking about. Will the Senate as a body act against them? Only if none of them have ammunition against any others, which seems especially unlikely in Feinstein's case. Probably something voters just need to remember the next time their names appear on a ballot. You can be sure each of them (and everyone else in the Senate) were already culpable of worse before this ever came to light.

 

[notimp]

If the fine/impact on your life is less, than what you'd expect loosing over the next months, what would you do?

Its hard to argue, why this isnt a 'victimless crime'. (You just got more information than the rest of the market, isnt that how capitalism works? )

It basically is, because of the structural disruption (system = unfair perception) it causes, and then perception of system becoming overly negative.

But if you had the opportunity to do it - and wouldnt be likely caught...
"""Why not:"""?

Someone explain to me why this is such a grave and low behavior. I might have missed something. (Never was in the situation to think about this one before. )

edit: Just googled for 10 minutes. Other people agree on my logic, historically. Love it, when it works out that way..

Same idiotic thing as with "we dont like illegal migrants, because they are illegal". "Yeah, but why?" is the obvious response there. Not - yes, very bad, because feels, and looks.

Morvovan has one thing going for him - the "other people do it all the time and dont get caught" argument, isnt such a bad one...

 

[FAST6191]

If the market is so key to your economy (banks, investments, retirement funds, savings, foreign investment... all feeding from it after all) and people are preparing to dump however many trillion in to keep it afloat when something goes wrong or people become idiots there is the expectation of fairness.
If it is a game nobody can play because of inside information being the dominant currency, or pricing you out as the price shoots up in expectation of you buying things, then nobody does and the money pools and importance of it all become far less, and you also open the door the market manipulation which nobody wants either. If you want a less hazy one see the Barclays and Credit Suisse dark pools thing they got slapped for a while back.
If your "more information" is because you have better algorithms, can pull sources faster, and do analysis of patterns in related fields, or think something announced is going to rock the boat for them then that is all good and how the game is supposed to be played.

As far as morality. Anything I invest I am prepared to lose and I would normally try to have a little "it'll be alright" fund going anyway. I would also figure it is much like hiring someone, or indeed not, in that if you can't think of a justification you are not trying hard enough.

 

[notimp]

Overall logic holds true (if perception is 'rigged' people dont want to play). But individual logic... is very different.

(Heck, if you dont want for perception to change, just dont catch me, copper.. Bail me out. )
-

The stuff I find titillating here is, that big financial investors - OBVIOUSLY preempt the market by trying to get information early even by miliseconds - and not all of what they do can be explained away as 'generally available to the clever investor advantage'.

Second the failover stops like - if stock index drops too much, trading is halted. (Stopping cascading effects, but...) (Actually, same logic as with corona applies, you are trying to slow down the rate of doubling of perceived negative worth.. Thats rigging. (But for the benefit of all' (Who dont like stock market busts.)).)

Third - so the regulation logic must be along the lines of "a few big players you can regulate" a bunch of a little smaller ones following self serving individual logic you cant - so you have to establish a "culture" for them?

Might actually be workable..

But then I fall back on - why can lets say someone in a national security commite not act like Douglas Fink? Because of conflict of interest and too much potential of 'market making' (less individual risk)? In this very second I find this fascinating..

edit: The other way around sheds a little more light. If someone 'big' is perceived as 'always a little early' in a way that is COPYABLE by many other market actors, the system breaks (people will not decide based on market logic, but based on sidegame logic). So that is what you are trying to prevent.

If big player rigs market in a way that isnt replicatable by many other players, you try to regulate him differently by doing something to his overall profit margin. Maybe slap em on the hand if they are playing too fast and loose... So complexity becomes the differentiator.

Am I wrong?

 

[notimp]

Ah, false premise.

By members of Congress[edit]
Members of the US Congress are exempt from the laws that ban insider trading. Because they generally do not have a confidential relationship with the source of the information they receive, however, they do not meet the usual definition of an "insider." [35] House of Representatives rules[36] may however consider congressional insider trading unethical. A 2004 study found that stock sales and purchases by Senators outperformed the market by 12.3% per year.[37]

There you go.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading

In May 2007, a bill entitled the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act was introduced that would hold congressional and federal employees liable for stock trades they made using information they gained through their jobs and also regulate analysts or political intelligence firms that research government activities.[41] The STOCK Act was enacted on April 4, 2012.

The STOCK Act requires a one-year study of the growing political intelligence industry, and requires every Member of Congress to publicly file and disclose any financial transaction of stocks, bond, commodities futures, and other securities within 45 days on their websites, rather than once a year as they do now. The Act also requires members of Congress and Executive branch officials to disclose the terms of mortgages on their homes, prohibits them from receiving special access to initial public stock offerings, and denies federal pensions to members of Congress who are convicted of felonies involving public corruption. The bill is divided into nineteen sections.[6]