Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notahacker | Hacker News Reader

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Except the article clearly explains that it was less "hedge funds conduct[ing] their own research independently to have better information" and more hedge funds buying early access to the polls not permitted to be released until 10pm in order to front run people speculating on them, and that doing so was a legal grey area. Sure, the people buying and selling "private" exit polls did so openly with confidence they wouldn't be prosecuted, but that doesn't mean what they were doing ought to have been legal or the original drafters of the law had intended to permit it. The safe profits weren't in trusting the polls were accurate information, but in putting big money on their predictions before most speculators were allowed to see them and taking [most of] it off at a profit when they were revealed on TV. That's really far too basic a strategy to deserve appreciation.

Throw in the article's [much more speculative] suggestions that pollsters' TV statements about the confidence of their results might have been influenced by their paying customers' strategies, and the suggestion Farage "conceded" whilst expecting to win because he wanted to bet against the people who trusted he was making an honest assessment based on good information. Neither would be likely to be illegal - people aren't obliged to be honest on TV and don't have fiduciary duties to holders of sterling - but both would be difficult to call ethical. That said, it's entirely plausible those individuals did honestly believe what they were saying at the time. Everybody expected it to be close, and as the article acknowledges, one of the reliable big pollsters' exit polls gave the wrong result.

> not permitted to be released until 10pm in order to front run people speculating on them

Exit polls are held back not for trading purposes, but so that people go to the polls and vote. If people think they know the result they won't go through the hassle of voting.

Or if they know it's close, then it might spur them on to vote for their desired result...

Yeah I agree. I don't see how withholding information here leads to a fairer outcome.

It's pretty obvious they don't want to affect the outcome of the election... Exit polling isn't super accurate to begin with, it's better for everyone if the data isn't announced until after the polls close.

If a specific 400 people had changed their mind in 2017 there would be a tory majority government rather than a minority with dup backing

If a specific 800 people had changed their mind the tories wouldn't have been able to form a government even with DUP support

However the exit poll in 2017 was pretty much dead on

Extensive research has been done in this very subject, case you are interested in knowing more.

FWIW my (admittedly cumbersome) sentence was talking about the "hedge funds buying early access to exit polls...in order to front run people speculating".

If they didn't hold back exit polls (for the reason you've correctly stated) paying for priority access to polls would be a whole lot less useful for trading purposes anyway because instead of the big poll reveal at the close of voting all kinds of [partial] poll results would be accessible during the day. But as you've said all this exit polling data available would affect voter behaviour, especially in elections like the UK's with plenty of "tactical voting" going on

I think there should have been a comma in there:

'Not permitted to be released, which they then used to trade'

If they broke the law, prosecute them. If they didn’t but what they did should have been illegal, complain to the people who wrote the law. If you had legal access to some information that let you make a good bet that a particular stock would rise tomorrow, would you refrain from buying some today on the basis that it’s unethical?

I reject your implicit argument that every action is acceptable unless there is a law that explicitly makes it illegal.

It is impossible to legislate everything. People do things that are immoral, unethical and just plain wrong even if there is no law against it, and it's perfectly OK to call them out for it.

I didn't take that as their implication at all. To me it was a rhetorical question of "are you really saying that it would be unethical?" with the obvious answer being no. As in not questioning the concept of ethics as a whole, but their relevance to this situation.

Do you really see this as an ethical issue? As far as I'm aware most laws around what information you can trade on aren't about morality, they're a pragmatic move to ensure a fat financial sector. By restricting the ways in which you can obtain information it opens the field for more players and more speculation. Reducing accuracy of prices in favour of robustness and liquidity.

Sure there's exceptions. One could argue that because they've made an agreement, there's a moral obligation for a company executive to look out for their shareholders interests and front-running trades that hurt them would be a dick move. Other situations though? A hedge fund buying polling information? There's no agreement they're breaking there. They're just beating competitors in a zero sum game, with the externality being that markets are more accurate than they otherwise would have been.

> "are you really saying that it would be unethical?" with the obvious answer being no

Did we read the same article?

Farage "twice told the world on election night that Leave had likely lost, when he had information suggesting his side had actually won..."

"feeding specious sentiment into markets..."

"he laughed about helping to push the pound higher ahead of its crash, a role he seemed to relish. "'Yeah, and a good thing—good thing'"

The obvious answer is that intentionally spreading disinformation to move markets is unethical.

That’s not my argument at all. My argument is explicitly that this is not unethical, and therefore if you want people not to do it then you should actually make it illegal and prosecute people.

Your argument was: would you refrain <doing legal thing> on the basis that it’s unethical?

Certainly, you should complain to the lawmakers because without making it a legal rule, choosing not to do the unethical thing isn't going to stop others from doing it. But that doesn't make it right to do it yourself!

Are you seriously asking whether one ought to refrain from doing something unethical, even if it's technically legal?

This is Ethics 101...

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