Let's say you live in front of the Splunk office, and you see tens of people in suits, a limo with a CISCO sticker, as well as a lot of commotion on the office in front of you. You strongly suspect something is happening, you buy $22k of Splunk calls.
If I may comment on this issue in the abstract: don't count on technicalities to get you out of legal trouble. Those are fine if you're very wealthy and have money for the types of lawyers and appeals that can use them. For everyone else, you don't want to be so close to the line that you end up losing because the judge doesn't like your face and woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Based on the compliance training I did this week at a hedge fund…
On the condition that you acted solely on information that was already public, or something that happened in a public place that you happened to witness as a bystander…
No, that is not usually considered insider trading.
If it's legal, it means that somebody could write a model that could predict mergers pretty accurately and make a lot of money. For instance, by tracking flight patterns of C-suites executives, scanning car brands in parkings next to offices using satellite images, and analysing working hours of the staff (this can be done in multiple ways like sending e-mails to check of automated OOO responses or analysing the light coming out of the building from satellite images.)
I think some analysts have been doing flight analysis for a long time to help inform trades.
Everything you listed is publicly accessible knowledge (there is an interesting conversation over the fact that a poor person is unlikely to have the available means to attain this information) and I think should be fair game. But I really have not done the legal research to confidently give you a “Yes” and willfully will exit so I don’t get some SEC agent knocking on my door.
> by tracking flight patterns of C-suites executives, scanning car brands in parkings next to offices using satellite images
This was old enough to be the stuff of office legends fifteen years ago. (Also, flying drones to thermally image petroleum tankers to infer their levels.)
Is that insider trading?