Modern Insider Trading - Food for Thought
Ok so I am just an intern, and I have no intention of trading based on inside information. However, I've thought about how easy it could be to do it really.... while also leaving no bread crumbs of evidence.
Contemporary society is becoming more decentralized by the day. The fruit of this innovation is that anonymity is easily granted to those who are smart. Now, if you have ever been on the dark web, it is easy to see that there are ways around leaving evidence to convict.
For those not familiar, the dark web is the internet that you don't see, where drug dealers, pornographic sites, and even assassins for hire lurk. What is to say insider trading doesn't as well. Maybe it does??? People maintain their anonymity through the use of a virtual private network and TOR, which is an onion browser, before accessing the deep web. TOR has layers of intermediaries that essentially make ur information and history inaccessible and untraceable as a user.
So, by this point you are on the web and completely untraceable. There may as well be a WSO (deep web edition). On this site, in theory there could be a forum where people could exchange information from bank to bank and even people no longer in financial services to learn of upcoming market events before they happen (democratization of what politicians have lol).
Remember "greed is good"
What does the WSO community think of this, and I do not care to get a bunch of MS and "delete this now" I am having an open discussion and hope to trigger a little discussion worth discussing
I think it's incredibly stupid to be asking a question like this. What are you aiming to get out of this?
Like, yeah, I can see that what you're saying is possible... does that answer your question? Are you going to live your life in any different way now that you've had some WSO stranger validate that you might be onto something?
Get off the dark web and commit to live an honest life dude. If you surround yourself with those thoughts/those kinds of people, you will become those kinds of people. It will catch up to you. Contrary to the movies, greed is not good, and you will lose far more than your easily-earned money if you get caught up in crap like that.
haha wtf just like to have interesting conversation dude. I live a pretty friggin honest life im on here
You can choose to live your life however you want man, I'm just saying... If you play with matches, you'll get burned. Maybe I'm misunderstanding everything. If I am, I'm really sorry; I just don't think this is the place to post crap like this. Especially given that this is a website that many teenagers go on when they're learning about finance in high school. This isn't 4chan, but your post was very much a /b/ topic.
If you're thinking about doing crap like this, it'd be a good idea to take a step back after your internship, unplug, and deeply consider your future.
Insider trading is an iq test. Those that are caught are fools. Not hard to have a non family member/mule to trade your inside idea and then funnel the money back legitmately. Guys get caught because they: 1. Have a family member or close friend trade the inside info (stupid) 2. Have their mule trade the info as the ONLY POSITION. You need to layer that merger announcement trade with other crappy positions. 3. Correspond with their mule using texts and traceable communication sources. Pass that inside info in person like every other responsible inside trader. 4. Have the winning position cash wired to their personal bank account (not that hard for the sec to put two and two together there).
All of this goes out the window if you are a large institutional player, old money billionaire, connected with Goldman Sachs, jp morgan or working for the senior levels of the government. They get an insider trading exception and can be lazy with their activities.
bruh....you’re supposed to go long the target co and SHORT the acquirer lmao merger arb 101. unless it’s an all cash offer and then you just go long the target. SEC would realize the guy’s an idiot, or not insider trading lol. in all honestly the SEC looks at trading Patterns so if you’re normally slinging $10k positions then if you do the same you won’t get caught. if you buy $10k worth of OTM 3 week call options on Target stock then yeah your ass is grass. in reality you just can’t get greedy, but most people can’t help themselves and make it super obvious with their trading history.
I’m not advocating for it at all but it’s not that hard to not get caught. only about 5% of insider trading is actually caught estimated. the other 95% is still shady shit where there’s no proof for prosecution or just not obvious enough to ever get on someone’s radar (aka no deviation from trading patterns).
"A few google searches"
There was a multi year investigation that had so many resources poured into it that at one point two undercover agents acted like a couple in a relationship having a huge fight in public to distract Ross Ulbricht so that another agent could steal his laptop, and insert a flash drive in it to get information. The founder of Silk Road was a complete whale on the dark web and law enforcement put far more effort to arrest him than they ever would with people posting info on a forum.
Alright, Frankie. One deep out-of-the-money call before going to federal prison, everyone knows the rules.