Posted by Here is the original Reddit Wallstreetbets post:
Is it insider trading if I bought Boeing puts while I am inside the wrecked airplane? …
Imagine sitting in an airplane when suddenly the … door blows out.
Now, while everyone is screaming and grasping for air, you instead turn on your noise-cancelling head-phones to ignore that crying baby next to you, calmly open your robin-hood app (or whatever broker you prefer, idc), and load up on Boeing puts.
There is no way the market couldve already priced that in, it is literally just happening.
Would that be considered insider trading? I mean you are literally inside that wreck of an airplane…
On the other hand, one could argue that you are also outside the airplane, given that the door just blew off…
Thanks everyone. Nothing here is ever legal advice but this seems fine? Insider trading, I like to say, is not about fairness, it’s about theft. It’s illegal to trade on information that isn’t public and that you have some duty to keep secret. If you work for Boeing Co. and you put the bolts in wrong and trade on that information, that’s bad: You learned the nonpublic information in your job, and you had a duty to Boeing to use it only for the good of Boeing rather than trading on it. If you’re the pilot, don’t buy puts when the door flies off. (Land the plane!) But if you are just a regular person and you go to McDonald’s and buy a burger and say “this burger tastes bad, I’m gonna short the stock,” that’s fine, that’s legitimate research. If you log into Instagram and say “hey this app is good” and buy Meta stock, that’s good. People are supposed to go around observing companies’ products and services, evaluating them, and incorporating those evaluations into their investment decisions. That’s how stock prices become efficient and how capital gets allocated to good uses rather than bad ones.
Similarly if you’re on a plane and the door blows off and you think “this plane is poorly constructed, I’m gonna short some stocks here,” seems fine. What duty do you have to keep it confidential? Maybe there’s some fine print in your ticket contract but I doubt it. There are probably edge cases. What if you are flying for a work trip: Do you owe some obligation to your employer not to use the information to trade for your own account? Still probably not a huge enforcement priority to come after you.
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