Anna Poltoratckaia
1) Mention which scenario surprised you most
2) Why did it surprise you?
3) Explain why you think or don't think that insider training is ethical. Consider the discussion of what is moral that we had before the film.
Scenario that surprised me the most was number 5: Stitching together a mosaic, because I was pretty sure that there is no insider trading involved. According to SEC "illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security." In this case the hedge fund manager was gathering information from different sources and his lucrative trades were based on research and the picture, which he had stitched by himself. Although it could be that some pieces of information were not supposed to be known by this manager, I did not consider this as insider trading, because most probably with the information from just one consultant the trades would not be profitable.
As it revealed I've found out that it depends, mosaic theory can be illegal and legal, depending on how it is used. In case of Raj Rajaratnam his attorney tried to defend him with the fact that Raj mostly used mosaic principles to trade, but it didn't help, because the pieces of information were mainly from insiders. However, as I thought mosaic theory could be legitimate, under a circumstance that the one who uses it is very sure that every piece of information is not material.
Insider trading is very complicated issue. As the quiz shown even SEC needs to look at each case individually to find out if there really was insider trading and was it legal or not. I would say that it is...