Big funds will have direct access to CEO's and execs. They'll sit down for an interview. Technically speaking, everything that the CEO will say has to be publi

Big funds will have direct access to CEO's and execs. They'll sit down for an interview. Technically speaking, everything that the CEO will say has to be public information. It has to be above bar. But sitting in the room, being right there, one might easily be able to glean more information than is actually public. Ergo - and edge. And it's not quite illegal. So that is a form of fairly above board 'soft inside' information that nobody will ever go to jail for. As far as more obvious 'insider' - maybe so, maybe not - I don't know - but I do know that you don't even need to do that. But generally I believe there is basically no reasonable way to beat the market: all of the quant stuff is done by very smart people, fast computers, the value investing done by massive players like Buffet, and the regular investing done by people with 'extra info'. I really do think that small retail investors are the losers in the casino. Oh - and also 'big dumb money', i.e. low-performing people at big banks, sitting on huge sums that the hedges get little bites out of.