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Would you feel cheated if you sold your options to someone who had insider information and then got rich a week later? Do you think it's unfair that they had kn
by millzlane 4y ago
Would you feel cheated if you sold your options to someone who had insider information and then got rich a week later? Do you think it's unfair that they had knowledge that if you had the same public information would have helped you to make a better informed decision? Would you have faith in a market that was rigged like that?
- pyuser583 4y agoI mean there are companies that have software that downloads and analyzes press releases (Fed meeting minutes, corporate reports, etc) and bases trades on them. That’s not something I can do. So the folks who analyze “public” information fast enough effectively turn it into “private information” for the first few milliseconds. The apocryphal story about the Rothschilds building special boats to report the outcome of Waterloo is like that. So it seems that you can have massively asymmetrical information, as long as it’s passed on public info. Which seems like a dumb distinction. In regards to congressmen, they’re often the first people to be exposed to new public information. So the distinction between public and private is less clear for them.
- Bilal_io 4y ago> analyzes press releases Yeah, that's public information. It's fair to everyone. We're specifically talking about "insider" knowledge which they take advantage of before anyone else knows.
- teo_zero 4y agoThere are people who can remember the cards already played during a poker game. I cannot. This is massively asymmetrical, but it doesn't allow me to peek at the next card in the deck before bidding.