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Comment by kasey_junk | Hacker News Reader

Because the hedge funds are by definition not insiders? They are literally not using non-public corporate data at all.

Insider trading laws don’t exist to make sure there isn’t information assymetry, the market is all about that assymetry. Insider trading laws are about insiders stealing from other shareholders.

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Well, it is non-public data. I once spoke with a lawyer to see if I could legally use location data to do the same thing (for instance, it’s easy to correlate changes in activity at certain retailers with quarterly earnings), and I was told it’s risky.

It is not true in the United States, other countries differ: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-03/inside...

Non-public and insider are two different concepts. I could send a satellite to space, take pictures of parking lots, count cars, and it'd be a pretty decent indicator to the relative success of a retailer. Add some other signals into the model and it'd probably be good.

I don't need to give the public access to my satellite images. But if I wanted to make a subscription service for 100k/month, I could. It would be non-public, but not insider.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/136...

That's not risky, it's done by tons of funds.

Is it just as legally risky to go to a store with a little mechanical counter and count heads?

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