[CrushinFelt]

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um, wow. talk about baby out with the bathwater lol.


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I don't know what this means?



[/ QUOTE ] sorry bro, don't be tempted to breach the NDAs though since you know the second YOU doit, you'll get arrested.


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Yup!

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so how do you find the 10 that are legitimate? what if they all claim that they were watching the flying patterns of executives and noticed a spike in each one's meetings with the other? shouldn't that warrant purchasing call options on the acquired's stock? the simplest would be to try to find relationships between option buyers and the companies or other 'insiders.' often though, that is tough. i'm sure the SEC will investigate but you can't just immediately convict all traders b/c there is some probability that it is ALL legitimate. even if that probability is close to 0, you stand to convict innocent people if you just arrest them all (with a greater than some % confidence interval required by law etc.).


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Yes, yes I thought about all that. And there is one major conflict:

The "worst" thing that can happen (according to most people) with any justice system is if any innocent person is convicted for a crime they didn't commit. The very basis of the ideology of democracy, our politial system of choice for which we are willing to go to war and die defending, is that the majority rules. In other words, if something is done that benefits the few rather than the many of a group then that inherently goes against our primary structure as a civilization. It seems to be the case that to not prosecute 5000 people because of the possibility of falsely imprisoning 10 is doing something to benefit the minority.

And though I phrased it strangely, here I don't mean the minority being the 10 people that would be falsely convicted. I mean the people who traded on inside information within the group of traders as a whole.

A counter to this argument is that the benefits the majority receives from options is worth the fraudulent activity that currently happens. That is a question to which I do not have the answer. Options can be replicated, obviously, by other means, so their value is really just the saving of transaction costs. I'm sure that, due to the number of options traded, the amount of savings every year is gigantic and likely dwarfs the amount that people make from insider trading on these deals. So in $-terms, marginally speaking it's likely not a big deal, but is that really the best way to look at it?

Sorry, kind of a rant I know. Just sort of struck a nerve.