> Isn't insider trading on a prediction market only wrong to the extent the insider is violating some duty of secrecy to the company?

Yes.

Prediction markets, for corruption reasons, are regulated by the CFTC. In commodities markets, actors are assumed to be making trades based on propriety information. Hedging is the whole purpose!

> …like it's a stock market where there is some society-level interest in giving participants protection from having less information than insiders.

Ah, no!

Insider trading in the stock market is (usually) only illegal in your first case: when the person trading is violating confidentiality.

It is not about fairness.

Fairness is a poor proxy for whether specific trading is illegal.

For example:

If a company accidentally leaves a press release for a merger publicly available, I happen to guess the URL, and then I trade on it: Unfair (I have access to insider information that other market participants do not) but legal!

If I work at the company, am sent the press release to copy edit, and then trade on it: Illegal. I have a duty to the company not to trade on it.

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victorbjorklund an hour ago | parent | next [-]

>> If a company accidentally leaves a press release for a merger publicly available, I happen to guess the URL, and then I trade on it: Unfair (I have access to insider information that other market participants do not) but legal!

Not necessarily. Just because you accidentally left your S3 bucket open and I brute force my way to the link by guessing doesn’t make it legal. It can still be insider information. Insider information is not limited to people who have a duty to the company. If I break into the companies office and steal information and trade on it then it can be insider trading.

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jstanley 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think your example refutes the fairness heuristic at all.

The first case is completely fair because anybody else could have done the same thing without any special access required.

The second case is unfair because you had to work at the company to get access.

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tyre 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay, then imagine you overhear at a bar. Yes “anyone could have” theoretically, but not actually. In either case, you have material non-public information that your counterparty in the market does not.

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j16sdiz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

you got that piece of non public information was not because you are an insider. As long as the bar is not exclusive to insider, i don't see any difference

	▲	cortesoft 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Isn't it exclusive to people who live in the area of the bar? What if the bar has a cover charge, so only those who pay get in? What if the cover charge is $10,000 and the bar is advertised as "the place where public company execs love to come talk to each other about private deals"?

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tmp10423288442 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your comment seems to imply that trading based on material non-public information in prediction markets is always okay, which is not the case. The CFTC just made a press release detailing some instances of invalid use of nonpublic information on prediction markets: https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9185-26

Interestingly, the CFTC objects to a political candidate trading on their own candidacy on the grounds that it is fraudulent. So it looks like they could attempt to regulate self-trading quite strictly, at least if that theory holds up after a court challenge.

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j16sdiz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I happen to guess the URL, and then I trade on it: Unfair

I can argue it is fair - anybody can try guessing the url, you don't have to be an insider to guess it

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ambicapter 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I have a duty to the company not to trade on it.

To the company? Or to the stock market, as a participant in it?