seems like you're conflating insider trading with all forms of manipulation & "real" cheating. Enron wasn't mainly insider trading - it was fraud by fudging the

seems like you're conflating insider trading with all forms of manipulation & "real" cheating. Enron wasn't mainly insider trading - it was fraud by fudging their numbers. My argument is to use greed to incentivize more market information that wouldn't have been public - so Enron's are found sooner. This will lead to a smoother market because of: - more accurate and timely information (stock pricing) - firms increasing transparency (info) to remove financing volatility - Current SEC 10k's, etc. are of little value as we've seen. It must be forced to prevent loopholes - insider trading does this from the inside. What I'm not saying: That market manipulation (ex. Pump and Dump) should be legal - thats another issue, and provides no value (information or otherwise). That's anti-competitive behavior with no societal benefit I can see - and hence should be regulated and leaked using insider trading ;-) Other concerns:  - Fraud in insider trading: Perhaps it should still be illegal to lie about your inside knowledge, and further firms that trade would have every incentive to confirm the data with other sources. - Risk pricing would be far better than luck if there were a lot of data points for each company due to multiple leaks over time and other business intel. The Street already know these CEOs, etc. - they don't exist in vacuums. - Your startup risk pricing ideas don't address the differences I cited - who is insider trading startups? That'd mean investing based on the inside numbers the company has - which is already normal for investors to have access to, and if a founder fudges those - it's fraud. Your concerns about risk pricing are due to this "real" cheating, which insider trading helps discover, and hence eliminates risk. Am I off base here?