"I don't see how you young chaps are going to make any money at all," said Sir Kenneth Keith to me in 1978 when told that insider trading was about to be made illegal in the United Kingdom, as it already was in the United States.  How wrong my esteemed merchant bank chairman was.  Far from its ban condemning "young chaps" to a life of penury, insider trading as broadly defined has become central to the profitability of the major investment banking organizations.  All entirely legally, too.

 

Insider trading is defined by Random House as "the illegal buying and selling of securities based on privileged information."  That definition rather begs the question: if nobody makes insider trading illegal, then according to Random House, it doesn't exist!