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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

If you work for NVIDIA, it is insider trading. If you saw the pallets in a truck at a gas station, it’s not. In the wild, it’s no different from Wall Street making trades based on strip club attendance or by flying drones near Tesla factories.

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> If you work for NVIDIA, it is insider trading.

Just to be absolutely clear, it can be insider trading if you don't work at NVIDIA.

Yeah, it's not about being an employee, it's about trading on Material Non-Public Information.

No it’s not. It’s about how that information was gathered.

OP works for a customer of NVDA and made inferences based on shipments they saw coming in. That does not seem like public knowledge

It CAN be considered insider trading then. If you work for company A and are aware of a large monetary deal between company A & company B that is otherwise not known to the public, if you trade company B’s stock, not only can it be considered insider trading, it may even violate company A’s internal policies which can get you fired.

It's still illegal even if you don't work for company A or B.

Not in the US. “Don’t trade on any information not known by everyone” is a much more strict version used in other countries. That stricter version destroys the incentive to short selling research firms.

That depends on how you learned of this otherwise MNPI. Insider trading can definitely be done by non-employees.

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1164964/000101968715...

"""

An “insider” is an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company. Rule 10b-5’s application goes considerably beyond just officers, directors and principal stockholders. This rule also covers any employee who has obtained material non-public corporate information, as well as any person who has received a “tip” from an Insider of the Company concerning information about the Company that is material and nonpublic, and trades (i.e. purchase or sells) the Company’s stock or other securities.

This policy also applies to your family members who reside with you, anyone else who lives in your household, and family members who do not live in your household but whose securities transactions are directed by you or are subject to your influence or control, as well as trusts or other entities for which you make investment decisions.

"""

Knowing things about another company that your company has a relationship with is not included in any of that. Those are all rules about tips from employees of the company with the security being traded.

Here is the semi classic counterpoint.

I heard about similar NVDA order backlogs when doing a 'I did this build with your salesman and the card doesn't fix, please let me get one that does' of a video card at Micro center during one of the crypto pumps.

The employee claimed a 6-12 month backorder on high end cards.

I didn't do anything with that info, but I'd I had, would not be insider trading.

No different from a Walmart cashier observing everyone is checking out Playstation 5 at an alarming rate.

No different from using satellite images of Costco parking lot.

> No different from a Walmart cashier observing everyone is checking out Playstation 5 at an alarming rate.

Arguably insider trader then

> No different from using satellite images of Costco parking lot.

Not even similar...

You don’t know what insider trading is. Please stop posting.

“A thing I observed at work about another company’s product” is not insider trading.

As usual, the answer is “it depends”. Observing too many people are buying the same product at a supermarket, is not insider trading. Observing product sitting on shelves for far too long, again not insider trading. Hearing your supervisor say that they’re hearing a product will no longer be stocked after the current contract is up, definitely insider trading.

No, that’s not insider trading unless you’re trading your own company stock based on that info.

That’s no different than you as an individual deciding not to renew Netflix and shorting Netflix stock in advance of it.

No. Unless you are the sole buyer or at least >30% of the revenue comes from you. The keyword is "material" nonpublic information.

I'm not sure it would be considered material though. It might actually make sense to consult a lawyer.

if "pallets of H100s shipping that were worth 100s of millions each pallet." and "12+ months of back orders with Nvidia alone" are not public information, then in my mind that is insider trading, especially those backorders.

Facebook was doing billions of datacenter capex at the time. It was semipublic information.

This is false because you have a duty of confidentiality towards your employer.

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