I agree with this view of most intellectual "property", but it doesn't apply here. In the case of finance, trade secrets absolutely are rivalrous. Strategies h

I agree with this view of most intellectual "property", but it doesn't apply here. In the case of finance, trade secrets absolutely are rivalrous. Strategies have limited capacities, so if anyone else is trading using your strategy you're going to be making less money. This is exacerbated by how markets are largely anonymous and distributed: nobody is trading with a given firm specifically, so somebody using your long-maintained strategy doesn't face any disadvantages against you. Moreover, being secret is the only protection strategies can meaningfully have. Copyright can't cover the strategy itself, just the code to implement it, and patents by definition require divulging how it works. And even if you could somehow enforce a patent on a trading strategy, other people would still be able to trade against it, making the whole idea a non-starter. At the same time I still don't think prison is a good answer to this sort of crime—but I don't think it's a good answer to car theft or most other sorts of crime either. But that's a function of deep issues I have with the justice system, a story best left for another time.