Securities Law Commons^™

Substitutes For Insider Trading, Ian Ayres, Joseph Bankman

Ian Ayres

When insider trading prohibitions limit the ability of insiders (or of a corporation itself) to use material non-public information to trade a particular firm’s stock, there may be incentive to use the information to trade instead on the stock of that firm’s rivals, suppliers, customers, or the manufacturers of complementary products. We refer to this form of trading as trading in stock substitutes. Stock substitute trading by a firm is legal. In many circumstance, substitute trading by employees is also legal. Trading in stock substitutes may be quite profitable, and there is anecdotal evidence that employees often engage in such …