I am a smart dude, and this means that I have the ability to understand information which is available better than the average person. Analyzing trends and then finding out information that people haven't discovered is how inventions are made. People act on this information every day and form companies which then make billions off of their discoveries, and then are able to enjoy their life of luxury. If someone does this action by buying part of an existing company this is called insider trading.
Another issue with Insider Trading is that people are deemed guilty until proven innocent. This is unconstitutional and unethical. The way America's legal system is designed is that people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty because it reduces spurious lawsuits, saves people time from unfair accusations, and means that we don't send as many innocent people to jail as we would otherwise. Guilty until proven innocent is a legal status used by many dictatorships around the world to lock away innocent people, and this needs to change as soon as possible. It is not fair to honest brokers the way it is currently set up and doesn't help prosecute the criminals.
When it comes to fairness and information, information comes to the market in many different ways, and if there was a massive new trend available and people started to trade the stock that is going to shift the demand curve for the good which will change the price which will get people to notice the stock and makes the information public. Market forces are very efficient as well, and with modern search engines it is easy to find out which stocks are doing better and what you should invest in. The main argument for banning insider trading is that it is unfair for people to have more information than others, but by preventing people from acting on the information the information becomes secret, meaning insider trading exacerbates the problem it tries to solve. There is no such thing as private information about price in an open market.
The argument on Wikipedia's article of a corporate officer buying stock of a company which will take over her company is problematic for several reasons: 1. When companies are taken over the stockholders of the company generally have their stock options converted over to the new company, meaning they have had no harm. 2. It goes back how the person buying Company A's stock is going to cause an upward push on the price for Company A which is inevitably public information.
On the other hand, while people go to prison for decades for trading stocks which are deemed to be insider trading, other people can go defraud people by convincing them to purchase companies which are little more than shell corporations (which then of course causes the price to rise because of supply and demand) and then they dump the company making millions off the investment and then the people they lied to end up losing millions of dollars. The legal word for this action is theft. These fraudsters, like Jordan Belfort, walk free every day.
I do believe we need laws against fraud. Jordan Belfort should be in prison right now locked up in the same cell with Bernie Madoff and the leaders of Enron. People who bribe (excuse me, "campaign donations") politicians and then receive government grants or special favors walk free every day. People who trade based off of information they have are not of the same class.
