What is Insider Trading?

Now, that much knowledge of the share market is enough to understand insider trading

There is a person named XYZ who works in a company, he knows that tomorrow the company will declare its results and because its results are good. He knows that after the results are out, the company's shares will be raised. So he buys shares worth crores before the results come into the market and as soon as the price of the shares goes up after the results, he gets a lot of profit. In the same way, if a contract slips out of the hands of the company, then that person first comes to know and sells all his shares. 

Any person who has company unpublished sensitive information trading by him is called insider trading. Such people who do trading before the information of the company comes to market, are kept in the category of insider trading. Now if a person says that he did not have the unpublished information of the company, To avoid this, everyone who has access to unpublished information will be placed in insider trading.

Insider Trading

Sometimes there is some news that the stock exchange board has fined someone because he did insider trading of a company. Insider trading also had a small part in some movies like ‘Harshad Mehta scams’. Another popular stock market movie ‘Wall Street’ which was released in 1987 also mentioned insider trading.

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Stock Market

Before understanding insider trading, you have to understand the stock market a little bit, because insider trading works only in the stock market. If a company needs money to grow its business or pay off debt, so one of the many ways is to distribute your stake among the common people. For this, the company comes out to IPO, and you can buy its stake directly by paying money to the company. Once you have bought the company’s stake by giving your money, it is not that you have to keep its stake with you till the lifetime of the company....

What is Insider Trading?

Now, that much knowledge of the share market is enough to understand insider trading....

Insider Trading Guidelines

In the US the guidelines related to insider trading say that an insider should never trade the stocks of the company while being in possession of material, nonpublic information regarding the company. In terms of India, the guidelines related to insider trading prohibit any sort of communication relating to confidential information by an insider....

Insider Trading Penalties

How to know if insider trading is wrong? Like in cricket, if it rains, the fielders do not face any problem, but due to bad pitch for the batsman, the game is stopped. Similarly to stop this undo advantage of the trader insider trading is illegal. Any person is banned to do trading if he has access to unpublished information about the company. It is not difficult for the exchange to catch the person who does the information on insider trading. There is a rule of Penalties that includes heavy fines and prison time....

Insider Trading Regulations:

Although, insider trading is considered an illegal act. However, governments across the world have been bringing regulations to stop the same. The United States (US) government took its step against insider trading by bringing the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Under this act, directors and major owners of stock are mandated to disclose their stakes, transactions, and change of ownership (if any)....

Insider Trading Penalties

In the US insider trading can give an invitation to severe penalties or jail or even both. However, in India, it is usually tackled by SEBI through levied fines on the offenders....

Insider Trading Examples

Consider another situation, when the employee who does not have access to the unpublished information, hears the conversation of his CEO saying that after this quarter’s results the share prices will be dropped. Hearing this he call his friend and told him to sell his shares and his friend successfully booked the profit before the share price goes down. In doing this, both people are found to be guilty and both can be fined or even imprisoned for their actions....